The Car That Changed Rally Racing Forever
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The Car That Changed Rally Racing Forever
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Re: The Car That Changed Rally Racing Forever
#2Thank goodness it did. The things drivers can do with rally cars is amazing. By far my favorite sport to watch. I'm sad that it didn't really catch on in the USA. The format is unlike anything that would sell commercially here.
Re: The Car That Changed Rally Racing Forever
#3It 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 Group B category and a long decline in the sport's popularity.
Re: The Car That Changed Rally Racing Forever
#4Thank goodness it did. The things drivers can do with rally cars is amazing. By far my favorite sport to watch. I'm sad that it didn't really catch on in the USA. The format is unlike anything that would sell commercially here.
It probably does not catch up there because you'd need a bunch of policemen to prevent spectators from being run over by cars losing control :)
Re: The Car That Changed Rally Racing Forever
#5It 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…
>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 Group B category
I know next-to-nothing about rally racing, but that last photo in the article must highlight what you're talking about: a TV cameraman standing about six feet away from a speeding car on a dirt road. Yikes!
Re: The Car That Changed Rally Racing Forever
#6It 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…
>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 Group B category I know next-to-nothing about rally racing, but that last photo in the article must highlight what you're talking about: a TV cameraman standing about six feet away from a speeding car on a dirt road. Yikes!
Actually more like this: http://www.motormavens.com/emAlbum/albums/Contributors/Patri...
Portuguese rally fans especially were completely insane back then.
Re: The Car That Changed Rally Racing Forever
#7It 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 mine owned an Audi Quattro Sport back in the late 90's. It was a very complex car, many components were unique to this model and hand-built. Maintenance was difficult, very expensive and very frequent. He bought a Subaru Impreza WRX "for those 8 months of the year that the Audi spends in the workshop".
Re: The Car That Changed Rally Racing Forever
#8It 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 nowadays. One event had about 40-50 special stages back then when now there are about 15-25 and most of those are just the same stages repeated. In addition they used to drive both day and night while while getting only a few hours of sleep per night. I'm sure current rally races are still pretty grueling events, but those drivers in the 80s must have been superhuman.
I'm still glad that things have changed. If they hadn't cancelled Group B the fatality count would have just increased. The cars were getting totally out of hand. Some rumors say that some prototype cars already built for the 87 season had close to 1000 horsepowers.
Re: The Car That Changed Rally Racing Forever
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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 Group B category I know next-to-nothing about rally racing, but that last photo in the article must highlight what you're talking about: a TV cameraman standing about six feet away from a speeding car on a dirt road. Yikes!
Actually more like this: http://www.motormavens.com/emAlbum/albums/Contributors/Patri... Portuguese rally fans especially were completely insane back then.
O dear. If my calculations are correct, those guys in the street have around eight tenths of a second to get out of the way.
Re: The Car That Changed Rally Racing Forever
#10It 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…
What he means with the sport being killed is what happened _after_ Group B was cancelled. Group B was replaced with Group A cars which at that time had much less power thus making the races much less exciting for spectators.