With Formula 1 largely in hibernation, the early January issues of Autosport are very often a chance for other motorsports, particularly rallying, to get their moment in the sun – or the mud.
Such was the case in January 1988 with Ted Toleman and Barry Lee gracing the front cover in a photo taken at the Prologue for the Paris – Dakar rally, though this was the calm before the storm. Hitting the Sahara for the next stage, they were among ‘literally hundreds’ of drivers who struggled to reach the control point within time, eventually surviving after their beached vehicle was hauled out of the sand by a back-up truck.
A full report on the early stages, with Ari Vatanen in the lead in a Peugeot 405, can be found here, and then in subsequent issues in the Magazine Archive.
