Argentina has a plague of flat car batteries. A law introduced this year says that cars must drive on main roads with headlights illuminated. Unlike most countries where this law applies, the cars in this country are not yet fitted with devices which turn off the headlights when a car is parked...

Alarmist reports that Police had arrested four spectators carrying bombs into the Cordoba Stadium for the first special stage were happily exaggerated. What they were carrying were large fireworks...

Land of rally car plenty! The driver of Mitsubishi car 76 was not alarmed when his car was found by technical scrutineers not to conform, so he went out and rented another rally car which duly satisfied them.

Former Subaru WRC driver Chris Atkinson is to be an Ambassador! Actually, the ad-hoc Ambassador for Rally Queensland, round four of the national Australian championship, on which he is to drive a zero-car. There is still no news as to when Chris hopes to return to the world rally championship.

Other news
Mellors Motorsport chief Chris Mellors says that the Pirelli Rally firewhich destroyed Guy Wilks' Proton Satria Neo Super 2000 when leading the event will not halt his company's challenge this year. "So far three cars have been built, and our plans are going ahead. We know the fire started at the exhaust. We very much intend to do the IRC championship Ypres Rally in Belgium and thereby start our IRC challenge, and we intend to continue Guy's British championship programme, because these events provide a good opportunity to check out developments of the car. Meanwhile Guy Wilks is to drive on the BTA Rally Talsi in Latvia on 16 May, the first appearance of the Mitsubishi Lancer Evo X prepared by the British based MML company. Finnish driver Juha Salo is also due to drive an Evo X.

IRC's Rally Russia (July 9-11) will again be based at Vyborg close to the Finnish border but will be more compact. The world championship candidate event, however, is another event altogether, based at Novorossiysk at the other end of the country.

Russia motorsport is being fuelled by rumours that Uspensky's motor business are in trouble and that secret orders have been given to suspend their competition activities. These include the Group N programme for Swedish driver Patrik Flodin in the Production Car world championship. Flodin confirmed that he knew the company's work force had been reduced but had heard nothing about how this would affect the rally programme. No official statement has been issued.

It is reported in Portugal that Jose Pedro Fontes is to drive an Aston Martin DBRS9 GT3 on the Vila Verde Rally on 26/27 June, in a category which admits cars with two-wheel drive or two litre engines. The car normally gives 550bhp from its 5.9 litre V12 engine. He is quoted as saying he is worried about driving a car which is 4.7 metres long and 2 metres wide on rally roads ...

3mmm