Axel Rietschin
Lancia Delta HF 4WD (Bruno Saby, 1987)
French driver Bruno Saby at the wheel of his factory-run Lancia Delta HF 4WD Gr. A, with co-driver Jean-François Fauchille, during the 55th Monte Carlo Rally, near Gap in the Hautes Alpes, France, January 21, 1987.
Miki Biasion won the rally that year, followed by Juha Kankkunen (both also driving Lancia Delta HF 4WD's), while Walter Röhrl completed the podium on his Audi 200 Quattro. Saby won 5 stages and led the rally on two occasions but eventually retired from the event. He went on to win the rally the following year.
1987 saw Lancia win its 5th world rally title, followed by 5 more manufacturer's titles in as many consecutive years with the HF 4WD's successor: the legendary Lancia Delta Integrale.
Photo tech: Nikon F3HP + MD4, Nikkor AI-S 180/2.8ED, Ektachrome 100, manual exposure (with the help of a Minolta FlashMeter IV). Nikon Coolscan 5000ED.
2017 edit:
The story goes that the car had cooling issues and Lancia made holes in the front bumper to flow a little more air through the intercooler and into the engine bay. The holes were not on the technical description of the car as it was presented during homologation, and were hidden behind the front license plate at the event, which was the first of the season, so the car passed the pre-event scrutineering. Then they conveniently "lost" the front license plate :-)
In response to some of the nice comments below, I have to say that I had a bit of luck with this shot. The car arrives at racing speed so there is no way I could manually focus a 180mm that close to that accuracy on such a fast approaching subject, so I used the pre-focus technique and fired the shutter an instant before the car arrived at the focus zone. It's a bit of a hit or miss technique. On some other cars the focus was a bit more in the front, or a bit more behind. Thankfully the F3 has a low-latency and very consistent shutter so the results are not totally random. I do not remember the aperture but it was probably F/5.6, so I got about 1 meter of usable DoF with that lens at that distance. 30 years later, I still have the F3+MD4 and the 180 F/2.8ED used in this shot.
Lancia Delta HF 4WD (Bruno Saby, 1987)
French driver Bruno Saby at the wheel of his factory-run Lancia Delta HF 4WD Gr. A, with co-driver Jean-François Fauchille, during the 55th Monte Carlo Rally, near Gap in the Hautes Alpes, France, January 21, 1987.
Miki Biasion won the rally that year, followed by Juha Kankkunen (both also driving Lancia Delta HF 4WD's), while Walter Röhrl completed the podium on his Audi 200 Quattro. Saby won 5 stages and led the rally on two occasions but eventually retired from the event. He went on to win the rally the following year.
1987 saw Lancia win its 5th world rally title, followed by 5 more manufacturer's titles in as many consecutive years with the HF 4WD's successor: the legendary Lancia Delta Integrale.
Photo tech: Nikon F3HP + MD4, Nikkor AI-S 180/2.8ED, Ektachrome 100, manual exposure (with the help of a Minolta FlashMeter IV). Nikon Coolscan 5000ED.
2017 edit:
The story goes that the car had cooling issues and Lancia made holes in the front bumper to flow a little more air through the intercooler and into the engine bay. The holes were not on the technical description of the car as it was presented during homologation, and were hidden behind the front license plate at the event, which was the first of the season, so the car passed the pre-event scrutineering. Then they conveniently "lost" the front license plate :-)
In response to some of the nice comments below, I have to say that I had a bit of luck with this shot. The car arrives at racing speed so there is no way I could manually focus a 180mm that close to that accuracy on such a fast approaching subject, so I used the pre-focus technique and fired the shutter an instant before the car arrived at the focus zone. It's a bit of a hit or miss technique. On some other cars the focus was a bit more in the front, or a bit more behind. Thankfully the F3 has a low-latency and very consistent shutter so the results are not totally random. I do not remember the aperture but it was probably F/5.6, so I got about 1 meter of usable DoF with that lens at that distance. 30 years later, I still have the F3+MD4 and the 180 F/2.8ED used in this shot.