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The Car That Changed Rally Racing Forever

gearpatrol.com

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Re: The Car That Changed Rally Racing Forever

#11

Post by mauricemir »

Nr7 wrote: post #8

It was amazing what the drivers did with these Group B monsters in the mid 80s, considering how different of a sport rallying was back then. The cars were at best several hundreds of horsepowers more powerful than current wrc cars, with much inferior handling. Most cars, if any, didn't even have power steering back then. Also the races were much longer taking place over about 5 days compared to the 3 day events nowad…

I recall seeing and hearing a group B audi during a road transit stage - the sound of the engine crackling and poping as the driver drove slowly through town was amazing

Re: The Car That Changed Rally Racing Forever

#12

Post by Nr7 »

mauricemir wrote: post #11
Nr7 wrote: post #8

It was amazing what the drivers did with these Group B monsters in the mid 80s, considering how different of a sport rallying was back then. The cars were at best several hundreds of horsepowers more powerful than current wrc cars, with much inferior handling. Most cars, if any, didn't even have power steering back then. Also the races were much longer taking place over about 5 days compared to the 3 day events nowad…

I recall seeing and hearing a group B audi during a road transit stage - the sound of the engine crackling and poping as the driver drove slowly through town was amazing

That 5 cylinder engine makes such amazing sounds. I saw the Finnish rally legend Juha Kankkunen drive his own Sport Quattro S1 in a spectator event in Helsinki last summer. It completely blew my mind. :)

Re: The Car That Changed Rally Racing Forever

#15

Post by exar0815 »

The article makes me really sad, but describes the best time in Rally sports. Group B cars made the rallye an event which had as much popularity as the formula 1. It was a time when Racing was 50% raw power and 50% talent, and it is no that it's major racing series, say Group B rally, Group C touring cars or the formula one gave birth to legends like Rohrl, Bellof or Senna. This is an attractivity that is completely lost in modern racing, really, with its small, fuel saving, ecologically correct "cars". Hell, it's racing, not a children's playground. Thank God there's LMP...

Re: The Car That Changed Rally Racing Forever

#16

Post by rodgerd »

exar0815 wrote: post #15

The article makes me really sad, but describes the best time in Rally sports. Group B cars made the rallye an event which had as much popularity as the formula 1. It was a time when Racing was 50% raw power and 50% talent, and it is no that it's major racing series, say Group B rally, Group C touring cars or the formula one gave birth to legends like Rohrl, Bellof or Senna. This is an attractivity that is completely…

> This is an attractivity that is completely lost in modern racing, really, with its small, fuel saving, ecologically correct "cars". Thank God there's LMP...

LMP? You mean the formula where the major constraint is the fuel characteristics of the engine?

Re: The Car That Changed Rally Racing Forever

#19

Post by exDM69 »

D_Alex wrote: post #7
makeitsuckless wrote: post #3

It also nearly killed the sport. Other manufacturers responded with Group B racing monsters of their own, like the Lancia Delta S4, which were high tech prototypes only thinly disguised as road cars. The result was exploding costs, exploding popularity (hundreds thousands of people lining the stages without the protection of normal circuit racing) and a series of deadly accidents, eventually leading to the end of the…

You make a good point (though including "exploding popularity" in the explanation of how the sport was killed is a bit odd...). But then again, the point of racing is supposedly to improve the breed. I am pretty sure that the technologies from rally cars find their way into production cars more readily than those from say Formula 1. And the Audi Quattro sure kicked off the technology race. By the way, a colleague of…

> though including "exploding popularity" in the explanation of how the sport was killed is a bit odd...

The issue with rallying is that it used to take place in remote locations with little or no crowds. There are no safety barriers to protect the audience. Additionally, the rally audiences got crazed by deadly dangerous activities like standing in front of the cars until the last second or trying to touch the cars when they zoomed past (there's a story that a mechanic once found a severed finger in the side mirrors of a car).

It became impossible for the race organizers to control the crowds and make the race events somewhat safe. That's why "exploding popularity" was an issue.

Group B was terminated after an accident in 1986 Rally Portugal (?) when a Ford RS-20 car flew off the track and into the audience with dozens of fatalities and serious injuries. This was only a few weeks after the fatalities of driver Henri Toivonen and co-driver Sergio Cresto in the Rally of Corsica. Toivonen's last interview concluded with: "these cars are too fast for the human mind, if you lose concentration, you're dead" [paraphrased from Finnish], then he closed the car door, drove off and was never seen again.

This is how crazy it was: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYIH7ApCxoM

Re: The Car That Changed Rally Racing Forever

#20

Post by exDM69 »

Nr7 wrote: post #8

It was amazing what the drivers did with these Group B monsters in the mid 80s, considering how different of a sport rallying was back then. The cars were at best several hundreds of horsepowers more powerful than current wrc cars, with much inferior handling. Most cars, if any, didn't even have power steering back then. Also the races were much longer taking place over about 5 days compared to the 3 day events nowad…

These cars were crazy difficult to drive, they had a "locked" four wheel drive system that is similar to an agricultural tractor so you have to slide the car around slow corners or the engine stalls (spectacular and noisy, but not really fast).

They had an unsynchronized H-shifter gearbox that requires double declutching on downshifts and careful power application given the huge turbo boost. The driver has to be able to use the left and right foot for braking and be able to press all three pedals at once momentarily when downshifting under braking (left foot on the clutch, right foot toe on the brake and blipping the throttle with the outside of the foot, misleadingly called "heel'n'toe").

Here's a really good clip of Walter Röhrl putting an Audi Quattro through its paces: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyVHj3sHVHQ

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