Words : Peter Scott

After five tough days of competition London based Swiss racer Daniele Perfetti, former British GT Champion, accompanied by Ronnie Kessel in an Alpine A110 won the 2016 Rallye Monte Carlo Historique by the tiniest margin of only 8 seconds from the Escort RS2000 of French crew Jean-Luc Hasler and Sylvain Blondeau in an RS2000.

Italian driver Gianmaria Aghem , a former winner of the event had Deigo Cumino on the maps and took 3rd another two seconds adrift in his Lancia Fulvia. There were a huge 298 entries for the event, all but 40 of which completed the route, starting from five starting points including Barcelona, Glasgow and Bad-Homburg.

David Stanley and Bernard Northmore had a tremendous run in their Healey 3000 having reached 5th place only to come up behind a logging truck when running first on the road and the time lost dropped them out of contention. Perfetti was always in contention but did not take the lead until a tremendous run over the final night time regularity stage over the famous Col de Turini enabled the crew to jump three places to the top step of the podium.