Tulpenrallye 1950

The story of 1950: Lex van Strien died after the first rally. The organising committee wondered whether it could carry on without its driving force, and knew there was no obvious successor. It decided to continue all the same, under a formula that shared out far more of the work among the committee members. Piet Nortier became the new chairman and also took charge of laying out the special stages. Jos van Calsteren and Jacques Lioni took over the secretariat, while Van Beeck Calkoen handled the dealings with the authorities. Bram van der Vlugt became clerk of the course and Han van der Heijden looked after accommodation and everything that happened in Noordwijk. Jelle Sybrandy was responsible for the results office, Cees Rijshouwer headed the technical committee and Geert Hoogeveen organised the closing test at Zandvoort. Alongside the regional automobile clubs of the south, east and north, another forty clubs were involved in running the event. This was the year the special stages were introduced, so that a classification could be built up during the rally itself rather than being settled at Zandvoort alone. The Tulpenrallye was the first rally anywhere to do this, which made it unique in Europe — as did the bol-pijl system introduced the same year, later known around the world as the Tulip system. It worked splendidly. Of the 189 crews classified at the finish, 63 of them — thirty per cent — still had no penalty points. The ten approach routes came together at Chalon-sur-Saône. The first special stage lay in the Vosges and followed a route that would return in many a later Tulpenrallye: the Route des Quinze Montagnes, 150 kilometres long. From Belfort it climbed to the Ballon d'Alsace, then turned towards Masevaux and ran by way of the Route Joffre to Bitschwiller and Goldbach. The Route des Crêtes carried the crews over the Col Amic and the Col de la Schlucht to Gérardmer, followed by a loop over the Col des Feignes and the Col Grosse Pierre, through La Bresse and back to Gérardmer. A fortnight before the rally there was still a great deal of snow on the route. French snow ploughs cleared it, but when it began to snow again just before the stage was due to start, the Dutch officials had to work extremely hard to let it go ahead at all. In the end they managed it. The Route des Mille Virages, from Luxembourg to Liège, was a considerable challenge in its own right: over its full 220 kilometres there was not a single straight longer than a few hundred metres. After the crews crossed back into the Netherlands at Eijsden there was a further loop through the country by way of the north and the Zuiderzee dyke — now the Afsluitdijk — back to Noordwijk. At the finish the cars were scrutineered in a large marquee under Cees Rijshouwer's eye and then lined up along the boulevard, which had been closed off entirely as a parc fermé. The 285 crews at the start, more than half of them Dutch, were plain proof of how quickly the Tulpenrallye was growing in popularity. The special test at Zandvoort was not laid out until after the crews had set off, and was kept secret. It began with a slalom around a set of cones, then a climb up the Hunserug. At the top the car had to be turned to come back down as quickly as possible; at the bottom it had to stop, reverse a distance, and return through the cones towards the start. The test was less about outright speed than about car control. Hans Kreisel led for a long while in his small Renault, but had to settle for eighth once the faster cars had run. The Zandvoort test was held on the Thursday, after which the crews were kept thoroughly occupied on the Friday and Saturday with outings to the Keukenhof and other attractions. There was a cocktail party every evening, and on the way back on the Thursday the foreign entrants were received by the mayor of Haarlem. Ken Wharton, with Langelaan and Dorsett, won again — this time in a Ford Pilot, with 43.598 seconds on the closing test — proving himself a very fine driver indeed. At the finish in 1949 it had still been thought that he owed much of his advantage to adapting his car to the test. The Coupe des Dames went to Mrs Joy Cooke, also in a Ford Pilot. At the prize-giving, where 121 prizes were handed out, Wharton gave a short speech in Dutch, and the Lex van Strien Memorial went to Klaas Barendregt as the best-placed Dutchman, in second overall.