The Absolute INSANITY of Group B Rally

When motor racing began in the 1890s, it was extremely simple to gather a

group

of cars and drivers and race them from city to city, the first to win in an era before there were purpose-built RAC tracks or timing and scoring. electronics. the easiest way to organize a race and have an undisputed winner; However, these events were held on public roads and therefore no tickets could be sold and anyone could just dance and watch a free race or at least part of it that people wanted. to watch the entire race and were willing to pay to make that happen, so in the early 20th century car racing migrated to horse racing tracks as there were hundreds of them spread across Europe and North America .

Fans could watch the entire race and get food. and drinks and even bet on the outcome and the best part was that the entire infrastructure was already built in the span of less than 10 years. Motorsports went from almost unrecognizable to looking exactly like a modern racing event today, but no matter how much motorsport changes in racing or how different it looks as the decades go by, some people will always want to. do things the old fashioned way, even to this day there are still racing divisions that organize races on those same 20th century racetracks, some people who insist on racing the old styles only do it out of nostalgia, others are purists and They say it's the only real way to race, but most see it as an ancient art form that deserves to be preserved and continued at all costs, which is why some drivers still maintain it.

Moving on to the point-to-point style of racing that began in 1911, the Monte Carlo

rally

was held in Monaco and the name stuck with that style of racing forever, from then on it became known as

rally

racing rather than road racing. one day. Racing on point The long rallies were divided into segments that ran over several days so fans could see more racing and get more bang for their buck after World War II motor racing experienced an incredible boom. in popularity around the world in 1950. Formula 1 Competition had begun and several rally series had emerged, but in 1973 the FIA, F1's sanctioning body, threw its hat into the ring and created the World Rally Championship or WRC.

They immediately saw success by obtaining the rights to the Mone Carlo rally. and many other major rally races across Europe, whether on the paved streets of Monaco, the snows of Finland or the mud of Sicily, the WRC did it all and had one of the most challenging calendars on the planet, soon the races of Rally cars became more popular than Formula 1 because, unlike that series, all WRC cars were production cars that anyone could buy directly from the dealership, the WRC had the rule that, to compete with a car from its series , a manufacturer had to produce at least 5,000 units for commercial use. and Private Sales, this role made the Stratos boat one of the most recognizable racing cars ever made and won the top division of the WRC championship 3 years in a row from 1974 to 1976, including in the United States and other places where the WRC had not yet ran.

They knew about the Stratos, the kids had posters on their walls, those lines are unmistakable, just look at that thing, however when the 80s came around there was a problem with the WRC, the number of divisions or

group

s they ran were too specialized and too much It is restrictive for car manufacturers to justify manufacturing the 5,000 units needed to comply with WC regulations, plus the six groups had paralyzed the teams with tons of rules along the way, so in 1982 the head of the FIA, Jean Ballestra, made a radical move and condensed the number. From groups of 6 to three two standard divisions would be maintained, but the third was something completely new, usually when a sanctioning body tries to win over the teams and factories, they introduce new rules to limit costs and keep them happy, but this Maybe the FIA ​​would take it away. the rules and say anything goes, as long as the car has four wheels and the engine breathes air, you can run it since the 1982 season, the FIA ​​and WRC effectively threw the rule book out the window and said: "let the Group B as it came." being known was pretty much the wild west of auto racing, only really matched by the crazy super modified scene of the northeast in the United States, instead of producing 5,000 units, it was reduced to 200 and if you change anything on your car from from year to year you only needed to make 20 more, a ridiculously low limit, there were no restrictions on turbo horsepower and superchargers were given the go-ahead and you could run any engine you wanted and even the dimensions of the cars didn't.

They were mandatory. meaning that a rear-engined Porsche 959 could be seen competing directly against a Soviet-made front-engine. Yes, the Group B Kami car was completely bonkers and I love it, and the manufacturers put their money where their mouth is by coming out with some of the most monstrous models. Cars that once graced a racing circuit began pouring money into their group B programs and let their engineers go to the launch of Hog Wild. They were here to take back their crown once again with their rally 037, the spiritual successor to the Stratos, it had a 2L rearmament mounted. 4-cylinder engine that produced 265 horsepower, which doesn't sound like much, but with one of the few rules, a minimum vehicle weight of 960 kg (about 2,100 lb), that meant the 037 could

absolute

ly fly through the streets.

He would claim the manufacturers' title in 1983. And they had another classic card to their name, the 037, and the martini colors would become as iconic as any racing car could hope to be, but its main rival in the 1980s was without doubt Audi and its Quattro series of cars, the fact that the word Quattro caught your attention and tells you how influential the series was in its heyday Audi had won the title in 1982 with an ingenious four-wheel drive idea, the Car had a front engine layout and looked pretty normal, but it had a turbocharged inline 5 engine. The two-cylinder engine and four-wheel drive meant that all four wheels could generate 340 horsepower.

It produced that it was significantly over the minimum weight, with Just a Touch being less than 2,500 lbs., but that power is combined with a way to get it going. On the ground, it effectively meant that Launcha had some serious competition. Four-wheel drive for rallying was largely considered a novelty before Group B, as it was too unreliable and broke easily, but Audi had apparently found the secret sauce and changed the game forever. career constantly updating the Quattro, they started with the Quattro A1 in 1983, but then debuted with the sporty Quattro S1. This was a big step forward in two ways: first, it produced 100 more horsepower than the A1 despite using basically the same engine design, and second. really delved into the ever-evolving world of aerodynamics.

Arrow had been something that racing teams around the world had been playing with since the 1950s, but the cards at the time just weren't going fast enough to make them worth spending that kind of money on. R&D, but Group B went so far in the power department that Arrow was now a real concern and the cars began to look less like trams and more like rockets. PUO was also in the thick of things with the 205 t16. They had a turbocharged inline 4-cylinder engine that made over 500 horsepower and they had Eros Scoops coming out of every corner of the car and despite having that large front engine compartment that's not actually where the engine is , is in the middle for better weight distribution. because this is Group B and you can do that kind of stuff, it won the manufacturer's title in 1985 in 1986 with Teo Salonin at the helm, now is where we can talk about the

absolute

ly crazy guys and girls who drove these things because they were As weird as his cars Teimo Solanin was a final driver who even though his appearance made him look like a tax accountant, he was the best driver in the history of group B, he won more events than anyone else, he was a relaxed man who never lost his cool. and he insisted on driving the car with one hand and leaving the other permanently on the gear lever.

Bloomquist took on driving duties for Audi and dominated their Quattro series, being instrumental in their title in 1984. Walter R won the powerboat title in 1983 and Of course, we have to mention Hill queen Michelle Muton. She is possibly the greatest racing driver who ever lived. She set the Pikes Peak Hill Climb record in 1985, she won the Lama 24 Hours and to this day she is the only one. woman who once won a WRC event and there you have it, a recipe for success. The fastest cars ever built for rally racing combined with the best drivers in the world.

The FIA ​​wanted to give the WRC a chance and they had achieved it. In 1984, RC was more popular than Formula 1 and fans flocked to these events in the hundreds of thousands, sometimes up to 400,000 people buying tickets to see these cars and drivers in action. There were very few, if any, crowd control measures in place for the Group B events and those 400,000 people had to go somewhere so people would crowd the racing lines and even stand on the track waiting to get the Perfect vantage point to watch these race cars do their thing. Some of these videos are just amazing.

Watching it is like the automotive equivalent of the bull run. I don't even know how the drivers or their co-drivers managed to see the road ahead of them. The mechanics and crew reported that after completing a segment they would find pieces. from clothes and hair caught in the grills and wings of their cars, blood-spattered body panels, and even fingers caught in the air. Ducks. Group B was an absolute mania. The coolest racing cars. The best drivers. The fastest fans on Earth. Everything had gone well for the WRC and the FIA, beyond their wildest imaginations, what could go wrong.

Bad in 1985, these cars were so fast and there were so few safety rules that even drivers began to express concerns about another rule in group b or that really the lack of it was that cars could be made of any material, including aluminum, those Audis and the launches that weighed just over a metric ton could do it thanks to their aluminum frames and roll cages and what it is about aluminum that likes to bend, if you've ever been on a commercial flight and got a seat next to the window above the wings, you know how much aluminum can flex during flight, that's good for a plane, but not so much for a car.

Rescue workers were also not numerous enough to do anything in case a car fell. Off the runway, it could take them half an hour to appear on the scene and their communications were also terribly poor. Many times, the only way they discovered that a driver had crashed was when another driver passed and finished their segment and went off the track. car and informed an official of the smoke they had seen, but by the time medics and firefighters arrived, it was often too late not to mention that the hundreds of thousands of spectators crowding the roads made it difficult to reach the scene, even if their communication It was better on May 2, 1985 in the Corsica rally the speedboat 037 piloted by Atillo BGA shot up and crashed into a tree.

His co-pilot was fine but when the doctors arrived 20 minutes later they found the co-pilot Mauricio limping out of the forest and BGA dead Still inside the car, the drivers asked the FIA ​​to do something, but they determined that at the speed the car was going, nothing would have prevented Atilla's death. It was more or less ruled out as a freak accident - racing is inherently dangerous, that's true - but the fia investigation left the drivers with little peace of mind, but later in the year, during the Argentine rally, Ari vonin crashed in A terrifying rollover, he broke both legs and some ribs, one of which pierced his lung.

He and his co-pilot survived, but both swore to return. I never raced in Group B again. The cars were getting so fast and so powerful that one driver said the cars were moving faster than he could react. I was more or less driving with Instinct right on the edge of what was humanly possible, so going into 1986. The FIA ​​finally relented and banned aluminum roll cages and placed limits on Arrow devices like wings and spoilers in hopes of reducing the speed of the cars, but everything else remained the same, without limits on power or crowd control measures because in 1987 the new S group arrived.replacement of group B of the division there would be practically no rules here.

Manufacturers only needed to make 10 road cars to reach the production limit and automakers were already developing their new round of supercars. In March 1986 the Portuguese rally was held and the country had already become a breeding ground for Gearheads of all kinds and now Group B would have its chance to achieve glory on the field, people flooded the streets in The first incident of the rally occurred when a cameraman was basically pushed into the line of fire and teim O Solin and very close. He broke up the man's delivery of his car and completely destroyed the $3,000 camera.

The next accident wouldn't be so LAX As Keem Santos, a native Portuguese driver, set off in his Ford RS200, wanting to see his hometown boy tearing up the streets, the C crowd was getting more and more crowded. At one point, a spectator jumped onto the track and Santos swerved to avoid him, then overcorrected and the car slid sideways into a group of people. His co-driver Miguel Olivera said that in group B the cars were so fast that he just had to look at his notes and feel the track. He turned by turn, but in this case he suddenly felt bumps and bumps as the car approached the crowd. 32 people were injured and three died, including a mother and her 11-year-old son.

In a disgusting move, the FIA ​​continued the race and did not tell the other drivers what had happened. When the drivers completed the segment and told them what happened, they banded together and promised to go on strike to stop the competition, but the FIA kept things going and Jean Ballestra said he would punish any driver or manufacturer who abandoned the Corsica rally just two months later in May. Henry Toinen and his co-pilot Sergio Cresto were having the race of their lives, winning stages left and right. But on the second day of competition their boat shot up at a point where there was no railing and went flying off a steep hill, the tank fuel ruptured immediately and a fireball erupted from the crash site, the drivers completed the reported segment. officials who had seen black smoke in one of the curves and when the rescue personnel reached Henry and Sergio nothing remained of the accident, except a charred frame that now in action was bordering on criminal and after international pressure from the drivers, manufacturers and governments.

B was immediately excluded from the competition and never saw the light of day again and its successor group s was eliminated entirely after group B's disbanding group, group a, the more strictly stock split, took up the banner. and moved on, but this time with the restrictions and safeguards that drivers of the 80s had wanted there were now crowd limits, they had to stay further back in most areas and rescue personnel were more numerous with helicopters in the air and radio communications were opened between them now if a driver went off, their officers would. know immediately and be able to send help in a few minutes instead of half an hour, yet rally racing remained popular around the world, the Subaru Preta WRX and the misub bitsu Lancer Evo became classic cars and their control systems Compu computerized traction control and driver assistance is commonplace today in road cars of all makes and models.

The features you take for granted in your personal automobile and the safety precautions implemented on every race track today were earned on the ice, snow, gravel and dirt stretching from Portugal to Corsica. From Finland to Argentina, people had to pay a high price for those things and if there is any positive side to group b in rally racing as a whole it is that they have saved countless lives through these technological advances, the WRC continues to compete today and the envelope. it is still being boosted but with proper safety measures to ensure we don't repeat the same mistakes and even with all the new rules in place that limit power and boost and make the car stronger with steel if you look at a modern event of the WRC.

You can see that the true spirit of Group B never completely disappeared. Today's cars have much less horsepower, but they are actually faster than their group. If you can believe it, they are brothers and with modern seats and belts they are safer than ever. There has never been a better time to be a rally fan with cameras broadcasting every angle of every stage and yes, you can still get uncomfortably close to the action if that's your thing for any of my European fans watching this. They understood it quite well. Don't forget I'm very happy anyway thanks for watching and until next time, take it easy.