Russell Brookes in the Andrews Heat for Hire Lancia Delta HF on the 1987 Lombard RAC Rally

Russell Brookes contacted the then Lancia team boss Cesare Fiorio in May of 1987, at the suggestion of Neil Wilson, to see about the possibility of using a Lancia Delta on that year's RAC Rally.

Brookes stipulated that the vehicle had to be a works car and not a Jolly Club one. Fiorio agreed to the deal in a matter of minutes. This would be the first time a British driver had driven for the works Fiat/Lancia team since Vic Elford in 1976. The drive in the Lancia created much media and television interest for Brookes on the event.

Brookes takes up the story, in his autobiography, about his drive for Lancia on the 1987 Lombard RAC:

The event was not a success, however, for I had grossly underestimated the problems of swapping to a left-hand-drive car. Although you can achieve 95% of the performance very easily the last 5% is very difficult to extract. You are so conditioned to driving a right-hand-drive car that you don't naturally position the left hooker correctly. I found that when my concentration lapsed just a little, I subconsciously tried to place the car a few inches more and more to the right-hand side of the road to equate to the view of the road as I would normally see it from the right-hand seat.

We were caught out in Kielder forest after taking a couple of fastest times. We came to a stage which was very slippery and particularly narrow with just two tram lines through the gravel. I was running with the wheels on the verges and not in the tram lines. As I touched the brakes on one corner the car skated off the road and into the ditch: the damage was beyond repair. But the whole package had been a great experience and I came away very impressed with the way the Italian team was organised both in terms of enthusiasm and in their attention to detail preparation.

The Italian service crews work differently from our mechanics. In Turin there is a depatment devoted to assembling the tools for the mechanics, and on the Sanremo Rally, for example, one van delivered all the tool chests at the start and each mechanic signed for his equipment. This department puts together the spanners required for the particular car build: if something has changed on the car since the previous rally, the tool content is changed to suit, and if specific small spares are needed they are put into boxes as well. It was details like those which made the organisation so impressive.

Video featuring Brookes on the '87 RAC

Source: Stage by Stage - Rallying with Russell Brookes by Russell Brookes and Neil Perkins

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