Destination Monfe Carlo

Time was when the venerable (since 1911) 2,000-mile Monte Carlo Rally was an adventurous endurance race rich in such hazards as rutted roads, unreliable engines and collapsing tires. Even in recent years, sleet, ice and blinding fog have brought hazard and death to the competitors. But last week, blessed by the balmiest weather in Rally history, a record percentage of finishers--331 of 363 starters--whizzed through the flag-draped finish gate on Monte Carlo's Quai Albert Premier. The only American entrant, Frederick Cramer, 48, a history professor from Mount Holyoke College, summed up this year's mild competition as "an agreeable hobby for middle-aged persons."

Barriers &Penalties. Setting out in standard stock cars from such widely divergent starting points as Lisbon, Palermo, Oslo, Glasgow, Munich and Athens, the contestants ran through natural and national barriers with little difficulty. The race, as always, was to the most precise rather than the swiftest, and contestants were penalized for breakdowns, delays, missing an obligatory checkpoint or being caught exceeding the 65-kilometer (40 m.p.h.) speed limit.

Competitor Cramer, accompanied by his wife and a Dutch co-driver and driving a Willys-Overland sedan, started from Athens, negotiated the relatively crude roads of Greece and Yugoslavia with little difficulty (unlike another Athens starter, Englishman Harry Sutcliffe, whose little Morris was badly shaken up by a large Yugoslavian sheepdog that rammed it head-on). Professor Cramer's trouble came in France. In the mountainous stretch between Le Puy and Valence, where swirling snows blinded drivers two years ago, the Cramers fell victim to the commonest of all traffic hazards, bungled directions, when they were sent down the wrong road.

Hungry Winner. The delay cost the Cramers 60 points and put them out of contention for the grand, million-franc (about $2,860) prize for performance.* The judges finally cut the field down to the 100 with the lowest penalty scores, sent them off on the hairpin-course speed run that is the Rally's final test.

The announced winner was Louis Chiron, 54, a Monte Carlo citizen who sped his 115.h.p. Lancia Aurelia over the final 2.14 miles of twisting city streets at 45 m.p.h. Chiron's secret of success over his Rally route: "Careful timing, eating, planning and determination . . . I munched dried fruit--grapes, apricots, figs--as well as chocolate and sugar all the way. I never quit eating . . . Others lost weight and time."

* This week Cramer had a chance of winning the "comfort" competition with a couple of in genious accessories:1) two loo-lb. bags of sand, slung on either side of the motor, from which he could release a trickle for rear-wheel traction when the going got slippery, and 2) an ultraviolet searchlight on his car's roof, which, Cramer believes, helps neutralize the glare of oncoming headlights.

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