Group B Rally Cars - Too fast to Race.

[pawan]

a very interesting video on the group b rally cars.
Too Fast Too Race - Group B class rally cars

[mclaren1885]

Yup that is a brilliant video on the History of Group B rally cars.

[Ripper]

This Video got me late for work yesterday

[pawan]

will ripper guess a another day for work late?

the sequel for the first part

still to fast to race:
Still Too Fast To Race

[Ripper]

will ripper guess a another day for work late?

the sequel for the first part

still to fast to race:
Still Too Fast To Race

Haha, I have the next two days off. plenty of time for youtube

[blackhorn]

This was a time which was considered the golden era of rallying, the Group B existed only for a short period of time but led to the manufacture of the fastest and the most sophisticated of rally cars, until regulations cut them short because of accidents attributed to the outright pace of the vehicles in group B rallying.

The Quattro S1 is probably the most notorious of rally cars ever built, it was revolutionary with the introduction of its four wheel drive(which at the time engineers were skeptical would work in a rally car because of the excess wieght associated with a complex 4wd system)
The Audi Sport Quattro S1 was a Quattro programme car developed It featured an all aluminium alloy 2,133cc 20V DOHC (5 Cylinder)engine slightly smaller than that of the Audi Quattro (in order to qualify for the 3-litre engine class after the scale factor applied to turbo engines). In road-going form, the engine was capable of producing 302 bhp with the competition cars initially producing around 444 bhp.
The vehicle also featured a body shell composed of carbon kevlar and boasting wider arches, wider wheels and, most noticeably, a 320 mm (12.6 in) shorter wheelbase.
In addition to Group B competition in rallying, the Sport Quattro won the 1985 Pikes Peak International Hill Climb with Michèle Mouton(Michèle Mouton (born 23 June 1951) is a French former rally driver. Competing in the WRC for the Audi factory team, she took four victories and finished runner-up in the drivers world championship in 1982. She is still the last woman to compete in top-level rallying) in the driving seat, setting a record time in the process.A total of 224 cars of this "short version" Sport Quattro were built, and were offered for sale.


The Audi Sport Quattro S1 E2 was introduced at the end of 1985 as an update to the Audi Sport Quattro. The car featured an inline 5 cylinder engine that displaced 2,110cc and produced an officially quoted figure of 470bhp. However, the turbocharger utilised a recirculating air system, with the aim of keeping the turbo spinning at high rpm, when the driver closed the throttle, either to back off during cornering, or on gearshifts. This allowed the engine to resume full power immediately after the resumption of full throttle, reducing lag. The actual power figure was in excess of 500bhp at 8000 rpm.
In addition to the improved power output, an aggressive aerodynamic kit was added that featured very distinctive wings and spoilers to the front and rear of the car to increase downforce. The weight was reduced to just 1,090 kg, and the S1 could accelerate from 0-100 km/h (62 mph) in just 3.1 seconds.

In my opinion these really were the f1 cars of the rally world.



Actually my fav outta the bunch is the lancia 037: the only two wheel drive car to take the championship while the quattro was still in contention

[avinash]

a very interesting video on the group b rally cars.
Too Fast Too Race - Group B class rally cars

will ripper guess a another day for work late?

the sequel for the first part

still to fast to race:
Still Too Fast To Race

Both these videos are not available in those links.

Found it on youtube





Group B rally has been banned for over 20 years now. Regardless of two decades of technological advances, Group B cars still inspire awe.
The famous group B cars like Audi Quattro, Ford RS200, and Peugeot 205 T16 do not show the full picture of Group B. Rules allowed manufacturers to create small production run specials of their mass produced roadgoing cars. They needed only to produce 20 evolution models of a regular production car to compete so long as more than 200 production cars were produced. This allowed manufacturers with large budgets to produce a new specialized model with 200 "regular" cars and 20 cutting edge specials as well as manufacturers with smaller budgets to evolutionize one of their regular production cars for racing. Many forgotten cars fit into this second category: Citroen Visa 1000 Pistes, Skoda 130LR and the Talbot-Lotus Sunbeam. Many cars were homologated by their manufacturers so that their customers could drive a nearly stock car in a world class event with a much smaller budget than is possibe today. This was the real goal of group B. By reducing restrictions on numbers of cars homologated, companies could produce competative race cars for less money.


The Group B regulations fostered some of the quickest, most powerful and sophisticated rally cars ever built. However, a series of major accidents, some fatal, were blamed on their outright speed. After the death of Henri Toivonen and his co-driver Sergio Cresto in the 1986 Tour de Corse, the FIA disestablished the class.
The short-lived Group B era has acquired legendary status among rally fans.

[blackhorn]

its my personal opinion that the group b rally cars or the 500cc two stroke motorcycles, or the f1 cars of the mid 80's acquired legendary status and it was requited and deserved, because they were really the epitome of racing, wild machines, with power bordering on insanity, the good riders/drivers flirted with that line of insanity with those kinds of machines to achieve their victories, however some went a lil overboard and paid for it with their lives, i am not saying that it could/couldn't be prevented, but i think every racers knows what they are in for, which is also justified to an extent with the kind of salaries that they are paid, after all, if motorsports was that safe, first of all who would watch it, its dangerous and its part of the appeal of motorsports, despite compensating for these sorts of disasters, freak accidents do take place, most recent of which was the one with marco simoncelli, nobody could have envisaged that sort of disaster in their wildest dreams but it did happen, motorsports demands a lot from its participants, and in the interest of going that lil bit faster, their efforts transform themselves into misgivings which we the conveniently end up blaming for the ensuing accident, there is a part of me which respects the safety procedures in today's motorsports and there is a part of me which also knows that such incidents involving fatalities cannot be completely eradicated from this discipline, blaming the machines themselves is futile and according to me a little selfish, the machine only does what it was made to do, its the human error which translates itself into something disastrous