Tulpenrallye 1960

The story of 1960: Once again the rally had no approach routes; all competitors started from Noordwijk. The final test on the Zandvoort circuit had been dropped, so as to leave more time to take the rally itself further south (Monte Carlo). A rest halt was planned in Monte Carlo (22 hours), which prompted remarks that the rally was in that form not demanding enough to count towards the European Championship. New this year was the National Tulpenrallye, an attempt to give the growing number of amateurs a competition and a classification of their own. For the first time stamping clocks (Longines) were used, so as to ensure that there would no longer be any discrepancies between the competitors' time cards and the logbooks kept by the officials (this had been the reason for a number of the protests in 1959). From Noordwijk the route ran via Eindhoven, Liège and Vichy to the Auvergne. There followed a route through the Alps with five special stages, after which only the test over the Col de Turini (12 km) separated the competitors from the rest halt in Monte Carlo. This test had to be driven at an average of 60-64 km/h. Only ten crews managed it, which made this test the clear decider of this edition of the Tulpenrallye. The route from Monte Carlo to Noordwijk, 1844 km, contained the remaining six of the seven tests of this Tulpenrallye. Despite the concerns after the successful but gruelling eleventh edition, 204 competitors entered for the 12th Tulpenrallye. Of these entries, 82 came from England. Among the leading competitors were Tak-De Boer with a Mercedes 300SL, Morley-Morley (the winners of 1959) with an Austin Healey and Slotemaker-Crellin with a Triumph TR 3A. Other contenders were Gatsonides-Steunebrink with a Jaguar 3.8, Kreisel-Flinterman with a Renault Dauphine, Barendregt-Blansjaar with a Citroën ID 19, Carlsson-Karlsson with a Saab 96 and Langestraat-Van der Wansem with an Austin Seven. Piet Jetten and Louis van Noordwijk, on their eleventh and twelfth appearances respectively, retired on the Col de Turini when a simple split pin in the linkage to the gearbox broke. The Mercedes 220SE crews — Schock-Moll, Mähle-Ott and Böhringer-Socher — were meanwhile running as a combine to help Schock to overall victory. He was particularly set on it, having won Monte Carlo earlier that year, as a second win would put him firmly at the head of the European Championship standings. During the route the Germans talked at length about the combine, and this led the French, not normally the greatest of friends among themselves, to decide to help Verrier and Trautmann to victory in the same manner. Because of that, Marang stood still for eight and a half minutes on the last test. Afterwards, when the detailed result was worked out, it turned out that this had not been necessary. On the final section from Eindhoven to Den Bosch, Verrier went straight on at the roundabout at Deil and damaged his car badly in the process. Fatigue was the cause, but victory could no longer escape him. The ladies Pat Moss and Ann Wisdom, with an Austin Healey, were the only British crew to reach the finish without penalty points. For the first time in many years the rally saw no protests and no disqualifications at the finish. The French crew of Guy Verrier and Rene Trautmann won this edition. After the heavy impact the Citroën no longer resembled the original model, but none of the other crews protested against this. At the finish the car was fit for the scrapheap. Pat Moss and Ann Wisdom with an Austin Healey won the Coupe des Dames. The National Tulpenrallye was won for the first time by Hoogslag / Honhof with a Volvo PV544.