Re: About Gruppe B and Sport Q's

[Mike Zamikhovsky <"MikeZ755@sprintmail.com"@sprintmail.com>]

Dan Simoes wrote:
> 
> >       Yesterday, I watched a videotape called "The Rally Supercars" (or
> >       something like that). It featured the Audi Sport Q, the Peugeot
> >       205 turbo, the Lancia 037 and Delta, and the Ford RS200.
> >       Interestingly, it wasn't clear
> >       from the video if Audi ever *won* any of the events -- how
> >       did they do?
> 
> We've talked about it on the list before.  They were beasts, all of
> them.  The Audi no longer dominated the sport as it used it, in
> particular the Lancia, Peugeot, and Ford were very close, if not
> superior competitors.  The MG was also a hoot to watch.
> 
> I remember when the Ford piloted by Joaquim
> Santos, a Portuguese driver went offroad into a crowd - that was
> the first year a Portuguese driver won the Rallye de Portugal,
> since virtually all the big teams withdrew out of respect for
> the deceased.  Shortly thereafter it was decided that the cars
> were uncontrollably fast, even for the experts, and Group B
> was banned.  Group S as I think it was called, never saw the
> light of day, as it would have had cars that were just as fast
> but that did not need to be build in numbers, as was the case
> with Group B and before (homologation I think it was called).
> 
> Rallying got pretty boring for a while thereafter, and I stopped
> following the sport.  My impression is that today's cars are better
> than the ones following the group B ban, but nowhere near as good
> as the pre-B cars.
> 
> | Dan |
> 
> --
> Dan Simoes                                dans@ans.net
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Fortunatly it is only your impression. Today's GrA and WRC cars are far 
better than old GrpB mostly do to technological advancement in engine 
management, suspention and most importanatly transmission and diff.
FIA limits their power output by intake restrictors and even then they 
are often substantially faster than GrpB even though they develop less 
HP. This is opinion of many today's top drivers that ran GrpB in past.