Rally Cars That Never Raced!
- Thread starter Craig HP
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Porsche 959 as well (same reason as Ferrari 288 GTO).
Scaff
Moderator
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- He/Him
- ScaffUK
The Ferrari 288 GTO Evo Group B car was never intended for the WRC. At the time group B regulations also covered circuit racing, and it was this arm of the group B regulations that the Ferrari was aimed at. The 959 was also aimed at this area as well as the WRC.
Anyone interested in the 288 GTO Evo should pick up a copy the DVD 'Too Fast To Race', which has some amazing footage of the car on track, and also covers its development, as well as a full history of group B cars.
Its also incorrect to say that the 959 was a rally car that never raced, it may not have taken part in the WRC, but it most certainly did in the Dakar.
Regards
Scaff
- 3,212
Thank you for the enlightenment, Scaff.
This sort of thing seems very obscure for some reason...
And, Group B was a death series from the start. Remember Henri Toivenen? Imagine how many more drivers could have died! Safety concessions were inadequate for such high-speed cars. Stig (I think) Blomqvist was correct when he said about Group B that "we were waiting for someone to die."
However, yes, it did produce some fascinating cars.
This sort of thing seems very obscure for some reason...
And, Group B was a death series from the start. Remember Henri Toivenen? Imagine how many more drivers could have died! Safety concessions were inadequate for such high-speed cars. Stig (I think) Blomqvist was correct when he said about Group B that "we were waiting for someone to die."
However, yes, it did produce some fascinating cars.
- 41,010
I disagree. I don't think that Group B was any more dangerous than the current WRC class is, to be honest, based on the fact that some of the Group B fatalities are wholly possible in the current WRC cars as well. I would also argue that many of the Group B deaths were simply bad luck more than anything else.
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- 41,010
Exactly.
- 3,212
It appears that the cars were apparently too fast for many drivers to handle, and older, more 'self-preserving' drivers drove them slower, but Toivonen's 'youthful ego' allowed him to race these cars quickly. I say that these cars were dangerous because deadly consequences occurred so often when these cars crashed. Given, they were not up to F1 safety standards, and people acknowledged and respected that, but Toivonen was unable to extricate himself from his car, as was Sergio Cresta, when the Lancia shot off the path and exploded. In safer cars, the driver and his navigator would have been able to get out of the vehicle, or at least suffer less-grave injuries. The fact that these cars travelled too fast for most skilled drivers in the first place labelled them as dangerous, though you're correct in that most of the accidents that occurred were indeed bad luck and less-stringent crowd control. Some minor rule changes could have kept it alive.
- 6,087
- Finland
Well, no. Those cars were damn fast incendiary bombs with wheels. Not a single WRC car has unprotected - to save weight - aluminium fuel tanks (under the drivers' seats) full of "rocket fuel", is made of glass fibre and magnesium or lacks automatic fire extinguishers. Toivonen's Delta met all those criteria. The actual crash of his wasn't that bad; there have been a lot worse ones since then, for example when Tommi Mäkinen crashed his Lancer off a road in Corsica and ended up upside down in a ravine some 20 metres below the road surface. Both drivers were unharmed. Had he driven a WRC car, Toivonen would still be with us.
The same goes for Attilio Bettega who was killed exactly a year earlier during the Tour de Corse in his Lancia 037. He hit a tree which protruded almost a metre into the cabin and bent the entire chassis badly. No WRC car is that fragile.
The Group B cars were far too fast for their handling (even the drivers said it) which led to crashes, and far too fragile to withstand those crashes. WRC cars have 300 bhp less power and 300 kg more weight but run easily faster times on the special stages. Go figure what that means for handling and car strength. In many ways the spirit of Group B lives in the modern WRC rules, the freedom of design remains in many areas but the emphasis has shifted from huge power to cornering performance.
- 33,155
- Hammerhead Garage
I don't think the Ferrari would have done too well even if it had been allowed to rally. Ferrari's previous experiments with rally cars never yielded much to begin with and like you said, they were track cars. They were never designed to handle the kind of corruption a rally stage would have dealt it in the first place.
Scaff
Moderator
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- He/Him
- ScaffUK
Spot on in regard to the cars, the development in materials strength has been massive in the last 20 years. Group B cars were significantly more dangerous than the modern WRC cars.
Additionally the demands placed on the driver/co-drivers were significantly greater. Rallies themselves were longer in terms of both distance covered and times. Night stages were still the norm and the average special was significantly longer than today (the Safari was the last of the 'old school' rallies in this regard), all of which put much greater demands on the teams.
I agree and seriously doubt that the 288 would even have seen a rally stage even had group B remained, its just a shame that the circuit side of group B died alongside the WRC events.
Regards
Scaff
- 24,176
- It/It
- GTP_TheCracker
Just before Group B was banned, a more radical formula was in the pipeline called 'Group S'. A couple of manufacturers, Audi and Lancia and Toyota, began building/testing cars under these regs.
Audi Group S Sport Quattro
Lancia ECV Group S
MR2 Group S
The Audi was made by a group of engineers without knowledge or permission of the top brass - they even went to the length of taking it to Poland for testing so no one knew anything about the project. To this day very little is known about the Audi project.
When Group B was cancelled for being too dangerous, Group S was also cancelled and the cars were never used competitively.
Michelloto's Group 4 308 wasn't a bad tarmac rally car.
Audi Group S Sport Quattro
Lancia ECV Group S
MR2 Group S
The Audi was made by a group of engineers without knowledge or permission of the top brass - they even went to the length of taking it to Poland for testing so no one knew anything about the project. To this day very little is known about the Audi project.
When Group B was cancelled for being too dangerous, Group S was also cancelled and the cars were never used competitively.
Michelloto's Group 4 308 wasn't a bad tarmac rally car.
- 310
Can someone explain to me what group S was. I looked it up on Wikipedia, however what I got was some rubbish about a ceratin band called the S group!Just before Group B was banned, a more radical formula was in the pipeline called 'Group S'. A couple of manufacturers, Audi and Lancia and Toyota, began building/testing cars under these regs.
Audi Group S Sport Quattro
Lancia ECV Group S
MR2 Group S
The Audi was made by a group of engineers without knowledge or permission of the top brass - they even went to the length of taking it to Poland for testing so no one knew anything about the project. To this day very little is known about the Audi project.
When Group B was cancelled for being too dangerous, Group S was also cancelled and the cars were never used competitively.
Michelloto's Group 4 308 wasn't a bad tarmac rally car.
- 6,087
- Finland
Group S was basically a further development of Group B which it was going to replace with rules very similar to the WRC rules we have now. It can be said that it wasn't actually canceled, just put on a shelf for a bit over a decade to surface again in the late nineties under the new name.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_B#Group_S
http://www.stormloader.com/groupb/s.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_B#Group_S
http://www.stormloader.com/groupb/s.html
- 3,212
Do you think that Group S would have been a bit like the GTP-class cars had these prototypes been developed? The rules between GTP cars and Group S racers appear to be of a similar essence.
- 24,176
- It/It
- GTP_TheCracker
Audi Sport Quattro Moomintroll has a nice ring to it...
Sum moar Group S:
Sum moar Group S:
- 24,176
- It/It
- GTP_TheCracker
- 24,176
- It/It
- GTP_TheCracker
From the other pictures i've seen it looks more like a squashed Group C racer than a rally car.
*edit* Found some more pix of the Audi. It would seem, from these pictures taken at the Sinsheim Museum, it was known as the 'Audi Sport Quattro RS 002'.
*edit* Found some more pix of the Audi. It would seem, from these pictures taken at the Sinsheim Museum, it was known as the 'Audi Sport Quattro RS 002'.
- 3,212
The car looks a lot like the Mazda AZ550 Type C concept, from this view.
Nice find, forza 2.0. The article is exceptionally well-written.
Nice find, forza 2.0. The article is exceptionally well-written.
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