As I do not speak more than about 200 words of French I always had pretty much problems to follow the things in France. Facts are that Matti Alamäki drove the Lancia Delta S4 in the ERC of 1987 and Jarmo Lähteenmäki drove that very car in the ERC of 1989 first. I don’t remember (or know?) what happened with the S4 in 1988, when Lähteenmäki still drove a Porsche 911 BiTurbo 4x4. In 1988 I saw Bruno Saby driving his wing monster S4 in the ERC round of Lohéac (pic on page 19 of my 88/89 RX yearbook). In 1989 Paul Châteaux drove a somewhat more civilised looking S4 into the 'A' final of the ERC round at Lunéville-Chenevières and, after Herbert Breiteneder had "kicked out" Matti Alamäki in the first corner and was subsequently excluded from the results, eventually finished third overall (pic on July page of my 1990 RX calendar). In Jacques Privat’s French RX yearbook 89-90 it is mentioned, that Châteaux drove a Lancia Delta HF Turbo in 1986 and 1987 and a S4 in 1988. Therefore I’m quite certain that the Saby and the Châteaux S4’s were different cars.
|