BBC4 Group B Rally feature

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Just caught an informative hour long documentry on Group B Rally.

Lots of after the fact stuff from the legends of the era, The STig, Michelle Mouton, Walter Rohl, Ari Vatinan and a few co drivers team managers.

Warning it does show a nasty fatal crash - but in the context of the show you have to see it to understand why Group B was banned.

I will guess it will be repeated several times this week.
 
Managed to see the last 15 minutes last night. That video clip that was fatal was required viewing because it showed the viewer how close to death the spectators were, in those years every time they were on the roads.

When it does happen, it is actually quite unreal and you do not get the impact of what has just happened until a few minutes later.

Even though I caught the last 15 minutes, it was informative and it felt like a good background to the sports. Just need to watch it again for the first 45 minutes!
 
Virgin+ for me.

I've quite a few Group B documentaries on DVD already so it will be interesting to see what this one adds.


Ta

Scaff
 
It's interesting how the end of Group B is generally linked with the RS200 accident in Portugal when spectators died. When the death of portuguese spectators has nothing to do with Group B cars, but with the increasing stupidity of the average portuguese rally spectator in those days.

We (I'm portuguese, in case anyone wonders) love rallies, and long before Group B existed the portuguese rally stages were already filled with people.

But the great increase in rallying popularity, coupled with a surge of very talented portuguese rally drivers in the early-to-mid-80s, made for a great increase in the crowd numbers, and made the true lovers of the sport be a minority among the crazy guys and girls that showed up to see the flyin' finns and swedes and our boys (+ one german, a couple of french and that was that).

The mindless crowds, the abulic police forces, made those deaths inevitable. Ever since the early 80's, it was not a question of IF, just a question of WHEN.

My point is, don't blame the Group B specs for what happened, blame the portuguese crowds. It could've been a group 4 car.

So, the way I see it, Group B was in reality banned (probably a just decision) mostly because the cars were "unsafely powerful", and the deaths of Bettega and Toivonen, plus the (fortunately not-fatal) accident by Marc Surer, not only proved this but also sealed their fate.


PS - Obviously I didn't see the documentary the UK guys are talking about. But I'm assuming the "fatal" accident being referred is the one that happened here in Portugal. If it isn't then I'm sorry for this irrelevant posting.
 
Watched most of the repeat at 1.10am fell asleep somewhere about 1.40am. Definalty going to have to watch it again. For me I am too young to have experienced Group B, but have always been interested in the wildness of them and this documentary really expressed that.
 
Hun200kmh
It's interesting how the end of Group B is generally linked with the RS200 accident in Portugal when spectators died. When the death of portuguese spectators has nothing to do with Group B cars, but with the increasing stupidity of the average portuguese rally spectator in those days.
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I wouldn't say it was just the Portuguese rally fans who were stupid. I mean, look at old Finnish rally footage. People would stand in the middle of the stage to take front view pictures of the cars, then dash back to the roadside milliseconds before the cars passed.
 
Smart_Roadster
I wouldn't say it was just the Portuguese rally fans who were stupid. I mean, look at old Finnish rally footage. People would stand in the middle of the stage to take front view pictures of the cars, then dash back to the roadside milliseconds before the cars passed.
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Crowd control at the Rally of Portugal had been poor for years before the accident happened and Hun200kmh is right that the crowds and the rally organisers were a major part of the problem here. While other rallies had issues it was nothing on the scale of the problem in Portugal, with teams already complaining and threatening to not compete because of the crowd issues (and that was before the accident).

That incident alone was not the cause of Group B's downfall, Attilio Bettega death the year before and Henri Toivonen and Sergio Cresto death's later the same year all combined to see the end of Group B.


Scaff
 
Scaff
That incident alone was not the cause of Group B's downfall, Attilio Bettega death the year before and Henri Toivonen and Sergio Cresto death's later the same year all combined to see the end of Group B.

Scaff
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That was indeed my point. You may add to those two fatalities Marc Surer's co-pilot. I won't post the YT clip here because it's a fatal accident, but it is the only one where we actually get to see what happened. And what happened was that a race car exploded into a ball of fire. This was already unacceptable in the eighties, long gone were the sixties when a race driver would die in flames every other weekend.
 
Scaff
Crowd control at the Rally of Portugal had been poor for years before the accident happened and Hun200kmh is right that the crowds and the rally organisers were a major part of the problem here. While other rallies had issues it was nothing on the scale of the problem in Portugal, with teams already complaining and threatening to not compete because of the crowd issues (and that was before the accident).

That incident alone was not the cause of Group B's downfall, Attilio Bettega death the year before and Henri Toivonen and Sergio Cresto death's later the same year all combined to see the end of Group B.


Scaff
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That's fair enough

boiltheocean
Could we ever see the return of Group B, power-wise?
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Try rallycross.
 
Watched it earlier on iPlayer. It sounded pretty horrific how everybody knew it was too dangerous yet nobody did or said anything about it. Also you really do have the question the sanity of the spectators there, can you imagine that at an F1 race? :scared:
 
Hopefully this ends up on youtube soon. I remember seeing a 1985 Rally Review and there were spectators putting on helmets when the cars went by lol
One camera man standing right on the outside of the bend even had his (£10,000) camera flicked out of his hands by the car!
EDIT: Found the vid. Don't worry it doesn't show anyone getting injured.


Read a little more about it. How graphic is it? I remember their "The Killer Years" had some pretty disturbing footage.
 
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FahrerGott
Hopefully this ends up on youtube soon. I remember seeing a 1985 Rally Review and there were spectators putting on helmets when the cars went by lol
One camera man standing right on the outside of the bend even had his (10,000 pound) camera flicked out of his hands by the car!
EDIT: Found the vid
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=7-o6CYb2iwU
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Wow, great vid. I love the sort of trailing headlight effect on the night stage caused by those old cameras.
 
if that shook you to the core, you won't like the group B programme. I was shocked at the killer years and senna, but the rs200 spectator disastor is a hugely disturbing clip. No tricks of the camera, it just shows a video of the accident in question.

It wasn't the programme I was looking forward to because it focused on all of the bad points, I just want to see more of the monstrous cars.
 
dan0543
if that shook you to the core, you won't like the group B programme. I was shocked at the killer years and senna, but the rs200 spectator disastor is a hugely disturbing clip. No tricks of the camera, it just shows a video of the accident in question.

It wasn't the programme I was looking forward to because it focused on all of the bad points, I just want to see more of the monstrous cars.
Click to expand...

That's what I was watching...
 
ah, sorry, i only saw the youtube video and assumed.

I'd love for a programme to go deeper into the cars and technology, instead of just going for a shock and awe approach.
 
Thanks for the heads up, I watched it tonight and it was a good programme although the narrator was terrible. All this happened before I was even born and its hard to imagine WRC been as big as it was back then looking at how basically non existent it has become today even from the recent peak of the late 90's early 00's.

Regardless of safety is was an epic era and damn shame to see the sport fall like this, with modern rally organisation and vast improvements in safety and materials I think Group B could return and be safe. Half of the problem was the crazy spectators and I think the world has changed a lot since then. Unfortunately auto companies don't have cash to throw around much any more.

Modern cars would probably look amazing and the best bit of the programme was looking at those bonkers legendary pieces of kit.
 
Managed to find some time to watch some of it yesterday, great documentary with some great footage so far.
I never knew jean todt was involved with the 205 turbo or even rally itself.
Cant wait to watch the rest of it soon, thanks for the tip!
 

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