The rally starts at 9am from Cite De Europe car park. Any entrants from last years rally go first then this years newbies leave 15 minutes later in a game of cat and mouse all the way to Basel with the Newbies being the cats. We assumed any legends would turn off the motorway or hide in the picnic area as gaining 15 minutes over a days driving would be a doddle. However we found none after 5 hours so decided to throw caution to the wind with the unknown oil problem and bury the throttle for an hour. After 50 minutes at a constant ***km/h we caught up with the tail enders blasting past…… then the blue lights appeared in the rear view mirror followed by the explaining in pigeon French what we were doing and why the engine bay was pumping out loads of burning oil smoke. “Le feu!!!!! Le feu!!!!! Le feu!!!!!” the gendames screamed. “L’huile… dacor, tre bien” we said back. A short telling off and a 90 euro fine we were off again…