I caught this program last night whilst channel hopping last night, it was on life TV or something like that !!

The point being it was about Group B rallying and the Grp B cars, the RS 200, TR4, 959's the lot. My favorite was an old Audi Quattro S1 sport running at over 600Bhp !!! Fekking monster !

But here's the question why was group B rallying / racing banned ? does anybody know, the crowd problems caused Ford and Audi to pull out (people on the track itself not good !!) but is this the reason why the baddest rally cars on the planet where put back in the garage ?!!

Cheers,

Phill

There were numerous accidents where crews were badly injured, then one of the Audis (IIRC) wiped out some speccies and killed them - then Henri Toivennen and Sergio Cresta perished on the 1986 Tour de Corse when their car left the road and caught fire...both were burned alive :(

Richard,
Yeah that lot might do it..........

A lot more crowd control was certainly needed from the video clips that i saw, shame though it looks like the nutters had moved engine technology to far ahead of the then current safety standards.

Apprently alot of these cars still run in motorcorss events all accross europe, lets hope they have resolved their safety issues...

Thanks for the info,

Phill

I believe that the current crop of rally cars are now faster across stages than the old Group B monsters thanks to the continued development of tyres, suspension, engines, electronics, etc.. They're just slightly easier to control, that's all. ;)

Cupla good videos by Duke on GrpB- "The Rally Supercars" and "Too Fast Too Race", they sell em everywhere (even halfords).

GrpB shouldnt have been banned, just should have jus had better crowd control n better safety equipment (the 205 T16 or the Lancia Delta had the fuel in bags UNDER THE SEATS!!! And they all had real weak lightweight alloy rollcages which did F all).

Was gonna do a similar thing GrpC (i think) with 1200cc turbo cars pushing 300+bhp, but that was scrapped too. IMO the 34mm restrictor business to keep the power down in rallying as GAAAAAAY, we want 500+bhp beasts, just keep the crowd controled better.

Yea, and bring back the old 'TURBO' BTCC rules from the 80's, FWD n/a 2.0 280bhp machines r rubbish, we want our 600bhp turbos back! (or even the mad stuff when there was 700bhp 1400cc Turbo BMW's n 700bhp Zakspeed Capris etc, jus with newer cars...)

And bring back TURBOS in F1 too (thas lame now as well).

Turbos for all! ;) :p

JBAHG

BTW in USA n Canada they dont use restrictors in their rallying. 450+bhp scoobies n audis they use, even an Rx7! Check it out on SkySports (at least once a week, cant remember what the progs called tho, a morotsort show full of irish rallying n rallcross etc)

JBAHG

Thats the idea, Turbo's for all....

Apprently they were about to bring a road racing section to the Grp B races and that is why Jaguar got around to desgining the XJ220. The 220 uses a TWR tunned TR4 engine with twin turbo's.

As to the fuel under the seat are they fekking mental or what, I thought the bravest racers in the world were the old TT riders in 50 -60's the things they did on jumped postie bikes, namely 180mph !! but these GRP B guys can't be far off !!!!

But surely with the above advancement in crowd control and engineering maybee they should look at re-introducing the series.

I'll keep on dreaming shall I !

Phill

I caught some Motorcross footage on satelite the other day, I think it may have been from the Havoc series on "Men 'n' Motors" (ahem ;))

Anyway, I like to see cars put through their paces, but this was like stock car racing with GrpB monsters. Rolling Delta S4s, looping Metro 6R4's et al.

dela

This is how close the spectators used to get!!


There is an old story about spectators trying to touch these monsters as they sped by as a test of bravery and Machismo amongst the young men This was all right until one of the works mechanics for either Peugeot or Lancia had to pull someones chopped off fingers out of the cooling slats!!!!!!!!!!

Andy

Phil

I take it you mean that the XJ220 had a 6R4 engine not a TR4? I seem to remember that the TR4 engine was a wee bit underpowered. ;)

The future of Group B hung in the balance the moment the Ford RS200 of Joaquim Santos ploughed into a packed crowd on the WRC round in Portugal, 1986. Four spectators were killed and 31 were injured. Audi immediately withdrew from the rest of the 1986 season, the other teams vowed to carry on.

The future was decided in Corsica, when Toivonen left the road whilst dominating the event and plunged down a ravine. The car exploded on impact. Both him and his co-driver were sadly killed, a great loss. To this day, there is still no real explination as to why the Lancia left the road. I know Rob Arthur (co driver to the late Tony Pond who died of cancer a couple of weeks ago) who was competing in both Portugal and Corsica, and apparently Toivonen went off on a tight, but well noted and obvious bend. There were no black tyre marks, and no evidence to support mechanical faliure. I have a photo of the car: the wreckage resembled an aircraft accident. Such was the ferocity of the fire that was left was a charred spaceframe and 1 brake disc.

No-one really knew whether Group B was to blame in this particular accident, however FISA acted within days and banned turbocharged Group B cars from competing in world rallying as from the 1st January 1987. Detuned versions of certain Group B cars were allowed to continue, and cars such as the 6R4 are still effective rally weapons today.

Mark,
Yeah man, your right 6R4 doh !!!!

Bloody program has left me confused !!!

Phill

If you wanna see some awesome video of all of these cars then check out the video

Too fast to Race

I think that you can get it from Duke Video,

oh and when you see a certain lickle white Ford rego E900 BAP, You are allowed to cheer a bit coz I know the owner of that car ;) :D

Group B rallying was what got me interested in cars and to this day i've not witnessed anything like it. When I first saw them screaming through Clumber Park I said to my dad at the time that I couldn't believe the speeds they were doing :). My dad who took me to see these 'beasts' used to say that 'anyone driving like that wants bloody shooting' :eek:.

I can remember drivers at the time saying that they were literally hanging on to the cars rather than driving them :eek:. When any motorsport reaches this stage something should be done to restrian it. What the FIA should have done is perhaps restrict the BHP to say 450/500 and impose stricter safety rules to both the cars and the stages/spectators, rather than ban the 'Group' completely. This would have maybe forced the manufacturers to concentrate on improving brakes, suspension, tyres, etc rather than trying to find an extra 50bhp. Like someone said earlier the current WRC imprezas etc are faster over the same (shorter) stages than the group B cars were. This is because of better components allround rather than outright brute force (Group B cars were once labelled 'point and squirt!) and as I said, if the FIA had taken more time over a decision then the spectacle of Group B would have stayed and evolved and the massive public interest would have continued, rather than die away as it did after they were banned.

Thats all for now folks!

Rich

Go to www.groupb-cc.org.uk (http://www.groupb-cc.org.uk) (although the site's down at the moment). Not only were spectators killed, but the cars themselves were unsafe. Special fuels and magnesium-everything made for a machine that burnt fast and hot when crashed. The WRC cars are faster over todays rallies, but the 'old' stages were faster, so the Group B cars would still have won in their day.
I personally have seen the 600bhp Audi that does the sprints and hilclimbs now and it is mental!!

Olly, nice to see someone who knows there rallying, I have the old screensport rallying I video'd from the eighties, The santos accident, the idiot spectators, and a very poigniant interview with Henri the day before he died, practically predicting the accident. The year before in corsica lancia lost Atillio Betiga, Sergio Cresta "I think that's correct" in an 037 whch had far less power, also a F1 driver got badly burnt in a RS200 "Marc surer?"
Lovell hit a child just a combination of accidents typical media coverage of the accidents and an idiot called J.Marie Ballest led to the end of an era that could have been great. I was going to send a copy of the tribute posts on Pond to his Email listed in autosport for his funeral but didn't know if it was appropriate.
Have you spoken to Rob Arthur since, Did he ever speak of how it was to co drive for him.

[Edited by sasman - 3/19/2002 5:58:18 AM]

Sasman: Rob still rates Pond as the quickest driver he has ever sat with, including Jim McRae amongst others. For years, Pond was rated as the quickest British driver around, remarkable for a man that never actually won any form of championship in his career.

Tony Pond was always my favourite British driver as a lad (my mates were football fans: my sport was rallying): a guy with both bucketfulls of talent AND charisma. Something you can not say of Burns and McRae.

I have a personal story about Pond. A couple of years ago, it was decided that our local motor club chairman, having stood as a devoted committee member for 25 years should be presented with some form of long standing award as a thank you for years of hard work and service. The chap in question is the biggest rally fan I know, and his favourite rally cars of all time are the Metro 6R4 and the TR7 V8. His favourite driver of all time is Tony Pond. I happened to mention this fact in passing to Rob, told him the story, and asked if he had any ideas. Nothing more was said. Only days later, a huge signed print of the famously battered TR8 in action on the 1980 RAC with a very touching message had arrived from Pond, and was presented to a choked chairman at the annual club dinner dance. A superb gesture.

Cheers Olly, I went to the 86 Rac to see the group B's before they were no more. Followed it from Bath to Edinborough and back again "in a rented vaux manta :), the tyres were through to the canvas OOPS when we got back." Waved their Metro past on a road section got a wave from your mate Rob :). Still gutted about Pond's death, I was a teenager watching him and it was like losing a friend, you had to admire his braverey, If we ever meet on a scooby event i'll try not to bug you going on about all the 80's rallying :).