Václav Blahna

"You cannot compare it to anything here. Those are mountain roads with just carts and tractors, and ruts cut by water flowing down the hills. I can't compare it to anything here. Also, we had run out of tyres by the end of the 1979 Acropolis, the mechanics didn't have any left anymore. They bought Romanian tires, called Victoria, at a service station, and that's we used when finishing."

"Škoda started racing in the Acropolis Rally a year or so earlier but never succeeded. The race was so harsh the cars couldn't take it. When we went there, Svatopluk Kvaizar and I were nominated, and Jirka Motal was my co-driver. He had been there the year before so he knew the situation and how it works. There's a problem with the tyres, they just get punctured one puncture after another. You need special tyres; I know the best team, Ford, used Dunlop. We got some Dunlop too but they were made in Japan. They were narrower than the ones Ford used and the pattern was the same, but they didn't puncture them while we punctured one after another. At the Acropolis, I punctured 17 tyres in the whole competition. You change a tyre in three minutes. I punctured about three, we changed them and we drove 300 kilometres to the track. Sweaty, hot, very dusty. I said, 'Jirka, I don't think I can take this race.' It was over 3,000 kilometres long. He said, 'Let's keep going.' He was reassuring me. Then you become a machine, you just go and don't feel tired or anything. You want to finish the race, so you have to act like it. But I know it was... Monte Carlo is a walk in the park compared with Greece."

"I don't know if my life was at stake, but there is a story with the number 13. They gave me the 13 at the Barum Rally. Until then, '13' didn't mean anything to me. We started the Barum Rally with a circuit around the Otrokovice tire factory. I was unable to get off the gas twice during the circuit. The car threw a tantrum. I was left in full throttle. We drove it to the mechanics, they explored the rear of the car but didn't find anything wrong with the throttle. We took off into the first time trial called the Pindula. Three kilometers in, there was a left-hand turn: you go almost full speed, then hit the brakes, turn, and then it's full speed again. Just as I was about to brake, it got stuck in full throttle again. We couldn't slow down for the corner and hit the roots of an uprooted tree. It was a hard hit, but Luboš and I were fine. It was in the evening and getting dark. As the headlamps shone on the tree's root ball, dust and all, Luboš started saying, 'We're on fire, we're on fire!' We quickly got out of the car. But it wasn't a fire, it was just the lights. Luboš was in shock and ran out into the road, running up and down. The viewers who were around had to catch him so he wouldn't get hit by the next car driving by."

"The competitions in Russia were specific in that they were held in the winter when there was a lot of snow. There was very little practice because you had to practice in a convoy, with a Russian leader in the front and a column of cars following them. There were three (cars) from each country, and we were riding in a column and we'd note time tests. The way they did it, you drove, say, on the main road from Moscow to Yaroslavl, and there was a quarry along the way. A bulldozer ploughed the track in the quarry, and that was a time test. That was good because you couldn't change it in the quarry, but there were also time tests in meadows and fields. We practiced for four days before the competition and we noted down the track we practiced on. But then we got there, and there was snow by then, and the bulldozer rolled out a completely different track. So, what we had practiced was completely useless. We have notable experiences. When we drove to Yaroslavl at that time, it's up north, the snow and ice were still there at that time. It was so bitterly cold, I think minus forty on the thermometer, and the Škoda 130's heating system was weak. We only had a small 'window' in the wind shield, the rest of it was all frozen. We'd turn on an additional heater, but it didn't work very well. We drove in wadded coats, and we didn't have racing boots and drove mostly using felt boots. They were warm and comfortable for driving."

"We flew in for the final two years and were told we'd get a training car in Russia. We flew in and stayed at the Ostankino Hotel for foreigners. It was all bugged and rigged with surveillance cameras and all that. We asked, 'What kind of practice car are we going to get?' - 'It's coming tomorrow.' A Volga arrived, a taxi with the taxi driver. 'Here's your car.' We said, 'Well, we'll practice with the Volga then.' We took off with the Volga. Initially, we thought the taxi driver was going to give us the car, stay there, and we'd give it back to him in the evening. But he said he'd come with us. We drove through the village, there was a shop, and he ordered us to stop. We stopped, he ran out and came back with a bottle of vodka. He sat in the back and drank, getting ever more courageous. He liked it when occasionally drifted the car, and he would always shout from the back, 'Full gas, full gas, full gas!'"