Back in the 80's there was an automotive renaissance - Rally Group B.
Till then, rally was made from standard production cars. And was amateurism from start to finish.
Back then, FISA was managed by someone I hate to my gut (and that I hold so-responsible for Senna's death) Jean Marie Balestre. Balestre was a PowerMonger with little to none engineering background and a true "chauvinist". He is responsible for some of the worse decisions ever made into the automotive racing world... but, there is proof that, at least once in his lifetime, he made a good call.
Knowing nothing about engineering, but eager to make rally " a thing ", Balestre made a laisser-fair decision, and being him the biggest of idiots, this proved an excellent decision because it fell right on the hands of the car manufacturers. Those where interested into showing off their cars and as such proposed the UNREGULATED group B. Balestre, signed off and GroupB was born.
There is some logic behind the "fear of GroupB" Somethings where good and others weren't.
The good part:
This is the best possible spec. No limits to car power, car tech or engineering evolution. It spawned stuff that, today, we take for granted in our everyday cars. However, for some reason, the majority of Hairless Monkeys (a.k.a. people) out-there, seam to understand it was a bad thing and that the ban was good! This is mental!
Group B unleashed the first chain of them all: Manufacturers could start a car from scratch that had nothing to do with the standard selling model.
This lead to light tubular frames with fiberglass bodies on top. The old Lotus recipe had reached the rally grounds. The cars where light, as a consequence fast and maneuverable.
Then Audi unchained the second chain: Add a small engine with a big turbo to a 4wd system, and you have a pocket rocket that can go around bends like a bat out of hell... and full sideways while stable and under control. Till then, Rally was mainly Rear wheel drive. Audi shattered that.
Peugeot unchained the third chain: The 205T16 was the first ever Rally Mid-engine, 4wd car. The balance was tremendous and the compactness of the car meant is was much more nimble changing direction, because the weights where in the center of the car, and the wheelbase was short (being based on a hot-hatch).
Ford unchained the fourth by creating the RS200 - a car for rally and then only building enough homologation vehicles to make the rules... unlike the previous where they would build a rally car around the stream line model they wanted to leverage sales on. Ford stated that the sport was good enough to advertise brand and not just model.
Audi replied to Ford's and unleashed the fifth chain by pushing the output of their engines way beyond the 500 BHP mark.
And the final word was Lancias. The last chain was Lancia DeltaS4 that joined the Audi4wd + Turbo idea, Peugeot's Mid engine, short wheelbase Idea and their own Volumetric compressor + turbo Idea, making it a car that was nearly unbeatable, ready for all challenges (except crashing, with the drivers sitting on top of the fuel-tank).
This was the marvel of Group B. and It made Rally, more interesting than F1!
The Bad part:
Nothing bad so far... Unleashed engineering, fast and powerfull cars, happy drivers.
The problem with driving a monster is that you get drained fast. The Rally was 500km long and that meant long stages. The drivers where being drained of their strength and concentration and that is when it gets dangerous.
Solution would be easy: shorter the stages!
Another problem was crowd. I'm a portuguese and I remember people bragging about having touched the rally cars as they basted through and thought to my self (as a kid): how stupid can that be... you've gained nothing from it and if the driver made any sort of correction you'd end up with a broken hand, arm or worse! The heroic reports just translated to Moron-ish acts to me.
Once again, a solution could have been implemented as it is today! Police forces people to specific areas where the probability of a car (or flying car parts) lands, so people stay withing a controlled area and away from obvious danger.. but DO BARE IN MIND, EVEN INSIDE A CIRCUIT, YOU CAN GET INJURED. Motorsport is dangerous, accidents do happen, and by taking place there, YOU ARE IN DANGER at least up to a point. What cant happen is having people cause accidents, as that is beyond acceptable. That, unfortunately happend in Sintra when Joaquin Santos corrected to avoid an idiot that stepped on to the tarmac and lost control of his car. He crashed into a wall of people killing 3 and injuring a lot more.
Looking at BBC4 documentary Hell On Wheels, it is clear just how stupid people can be: Out of the victims, Nuno Sadrinha, clearly understands that the crowd is to blame, while another victim, Helio Tomar, thinks that by standing on the side of the road (no sidewalk, no barrier) was safe while a rally was going on! Just how stupid can you be to claim such a thing, mister Helio? Take a lesson from your colleague Nuno. He clearly learned something that day and has a lucid picture.
Latter that year, Corsica Rally took another victim, as the roads didn't have any sort of barriers, so a car out of control would fly into trees and break apart. HOW HARD would have it been to force the local governments to implement steel rail-guards? What to host Rally? Install steel road guards!
Evidently, Pilots started demanding Crowd Control, better security measures and Shorter stages but then again they were going against the biggest idiot of them all - Balestre.
The result: BAN! And the best automotive sport that ever existed was gone.
Looking back, I'm grateful to have lived it first hand, and I feel lucky to live right next to Sintra and also to have family up north. I can drive these beautiful roads filled with heritage. If you where physically there, you would not have believed just how fast (and loud) the cars were... TV makes it no justice.
As a human being, and an engineer, it saddens me and makes me ashamed to be classified as the same species, as people that think that repression and bans are solutions to problems.
The only Bans I see valid are reserved for politicians and leashes alike, and being Balestre a political animal, he would be the one to be banned.
This sort of dementia has took over the world. We now live in a planet that thinks in it's majority that motorsports as something bad and that GroupB ban was a good decision.
We restrict engineers and manufacturers to tight regulations that make rally cars product little over 300BHP.. but then we sell road cars that have twice as that. It's mental and we, humanity, deserve the asteroid... it's actually a good 2 decades late :s
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