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Pit Stop: The Group B-sides · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

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We always have a blast chatting with our guests about all sorts of
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different topics, but sometimes we go off the rails and dig deeper into
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their automotive and motorsports pasts.
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As a bonus, let's go behind the scenes with this pit stop mini sode
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for some extra content that didn't quite fit in the main episode.
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Sit back, enjoy, and remember to like, subscribe, and
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support Brake Fix on Patreon.
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Gosh, Eric, are you, uh, seeing and hearing me?
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Yeah, you, you look good.
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You sound good.
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Oh, I, uh, overcame my just sheer anti techness.
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I just overcame it.
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And I was just like, what was that camera Eric recommended me?
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And I just like dug through and I found the email.
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I remember when you said it, I didn't even acknowledge it.
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I was so like, just not wanting to think about the technology,
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but then I, I revisited it.
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Yeah.
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And we didn't do our, was the origin of rallying.
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The Scandinavians with the shortcut through the forest or the British.
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Well, let's, let's talk about that.
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Did you figure out what the real story is where the origin of rally is?
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When I started talking about the different events, each individual
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event has its own history.
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So an event like the Monte Carlo rally or the RAC rally.
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both pre day rallying in their current form.
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Right.
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And certainly in the form that it was in in group B.
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In other words, the RAC rally is a blend of the traditional British
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regularity trial, when what they talk about is it was in 1960 that
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the RAC rally went into the forests.
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Well, at that point, it looks like the kind of event that the Scandinavians
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were familiar with and had created.
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What I'm not sure about is when, you know, the Monte Carlo rally stopped being
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like this regularity trial where you could start from any city around Europe
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and you drove towards Monte Carlo and then there were some events at Monte
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Carlo and then there was a winner.
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I don't know when it went away from that and went to this format that
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you drove from town to town and there were the special stages in between.
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I don't know when that format was introduced.
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That had to have been probably in the 60s, right?
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I mean, I'm sure it will say in Wikipedia, but it's, uh, yeah, I'm not sure.
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And as for, you know, what did the world rally championship look like in
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like, cause it wasn't the first one in like 1973 or something like that.
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Yeah.
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The first official, yeah.
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WRC.
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Uh, and I got to ask this question.
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In period or out of period doesn't matter, but do you have a favorite rally?
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Because there are so many like Acropolis versus Kenya versus Poland.
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I like the San Remo.
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I like the tarmac twisty on the side of the cliff.
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The Monte Carlo rally.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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Well, there's the San Remo and there's Corsica.
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Yeah.
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Well, those are the two that I think of as being, you know, winding along
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the edge of the cliff, but on the pave where it's got like a dry stone wall on
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one side and a cliff on the other side.
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And if you go through the dry stone wall, there's the big drop off.
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When I think about favorite rally stages, it's that one.
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Well, and they're classic, too, with all the helicopter shots that they would take
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back then, watching them on a basically a one lane road on the side of a cliff.
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They are absolutely iconic.
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If only those helicopters were a real issue, is that people would like,
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because of the helicopter, people would be standing in the road looking at the
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helicopter, not hear the car coming.
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That's right.
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Considering how loud the groupie cars are, yeah, then they still couldn't hear them.
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I think for me, Monte Carlo is also iconic.
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Just because it is and that run up to the summit there at Monte
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Carlo is absolutely amazing.
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But one of my favorites has always been Rally Sweden.
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It has such a rhythm to it.
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I tend to use that as a warm up for other virtual racing too.
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I can't pronounce it.
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It's like Hogs Finborg.
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It's like a 13 kilometer run.
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It takes about 12 minutes to do even in a group B car.
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It's pretty long.
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It's very complicated, but it has a brilliant flow to it.
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And all the Swedish stages are like that generally in the snow, you know,
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because it's early in the, in the season.
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So Rally Sweden's beautiful along these lakes.
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So, so I've always appreciated that.
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I would say probably my least favorites are the safari ones because
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they're just so long and straight.
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And then like Rally Japan and some of those that are just narrow, very slow
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and more like a time distance rally.
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And of a modern rally stage, Estonia is really cool.
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That one's a lot of fun.
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It's really fast.
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But that's sort of the beauty because there's so many different
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ones to watch and check out.
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You know, the Safari rally is more like the Marathon rallies like that rally to
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Mexico that Mikola won in 1970 or like the Panamericana or some of the ones
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that Fangio did back, you know, they would like you talked about it where
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you drove from Argentina to wherever and you know, all those kinds of things.
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Yeah, although those things were, you see, I don't know how those
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kind of South American road races.
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Evolved.
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I do know that by the 1970s, the newspapers were big into they did that
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sort of London to Sydney marathon.
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Yeah, that was what was that one Paris to Bordeaux and back or something
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was like one of the earliest races, which is basically a road race.
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Yeah, that supposedly the 1st motor race was from Paris to reward and
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it was meant to be a demonstration vehicles, but it turned into a race.
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And then from then they got the idea to do these city to
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city races where you would be.
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Yes, Paris to Bordeaux or, or something like that famously, you know, that death
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race of 1903, the one that banned this kind of open road racing, it was Paris to
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Madrid, but they stopped it at Bordeaux because they'd been so many casualties,
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you know, on the road way down there.
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So I'm going to tell you an amusing story now that I may not,
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that I haven't told you before.
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So RM, last year at Pebble Beach, I was introduced to a guy called
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English Bloke, who's appeared on TV.
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Nick Smith, I think is his name.
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I might have got his name right.
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Or anyway, we were both there with our sons and we spent a long time inside
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looking at Ferraris and realized we had a shared love of Ferraris.
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Before we realized that we had a shared love of motorcycles as well.
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And he, in fact, runs a website that does motorcycles and he's more
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known for motorcycles than for cars.
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He does, uh, does both.
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Well, my son was, was nine at the time and he was poking around looking at the cars.
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And, uh, Nick's son was 15 at the time and was poking around
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and looking at the cars as well.
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We moved outside and, uh, I asked the lad whether or not he recognized the group.
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B Citroen BX four wheel drive.
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I don't know exactly what the model name was.
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You're laughing.
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You probably do.
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And I'm like, where did they drag this from?
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It's so fitted at pebble beach.
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The lad knew exactly what it was.
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It is not a common Group B rally car.
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This is a rat hole Group B rally car, yet it had penetrated the,
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not the mainstream, but you know, a 15 year old knows what it is.
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And because of that, the eight year old was interested in looking at it as well.
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And now the eight year old knows what it is as well.
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So this fascinating thing with Group B is that it is resonated in a way
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that nobody's really talking about it, but, and I don't want to get
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down this rat hole now, but my God, classic car values at Pebble Beach.
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Anything older than 1980.
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Nobody wants it.
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Anything older than 1960, there was the tumbleweed blowing across
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the stage as nobody was bidding.
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I think if you took out everybody, if you like cross referenced bidders under
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the age of 70 and actual sales of cars.
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Older than 1970 or 1980.
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My word.
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There were probably, there was a sell through probably about 20%.
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If you cross reference it like that, it's just the young'uns are not
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buying the cars that the old'uns did.
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And you know, I have an RS 200 story actually, uh, Eric.
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When I was, what, 18 years old, my, well, Mark Gammy, who I do these podcasts
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with, he and I, we used to hang out at the McDonald's and have a chocolate
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milkshake over an evening sometimes if there was nothing better to do.
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And right by there was Vospers 4, the old Ford dealership.
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Well, there was a Razzmatazz over there one day, so, uh, we finished up our
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chocolate milkshakes and, uh, Rolled over to see what was going on there.
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We rolled over there in my orange Ford Cortina 1.
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6.
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It was the launch of something.
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I remember what it was, maybe the facelifted Ford Sierra.
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It was anyway, they had an RS 200 in the showroom there.
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It was like a road going.
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version of it.
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Nobody was around.
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Dami and I sat in an RS200 and we're like, now we need to be like that moment
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in that James Bond movie, you know, where he drives the AMC Hornet out of the
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window of the dealership and speeds away.
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I, uh, I was tempted to do that, but, uh, but, but I didn't.
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I remember they also did that big razzmatazz around the car that we
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got, I think it was the Audi 100.
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It had like a CD of 0.
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30.
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Oh, the 5000, yeah, they marketed it as in the US, yeah.
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Yeah, for Americans, the 5000 has this horrible, bad quality, like
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debacle story associated with it.
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Unintended acceleration, thank you.
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Yeah, in Europe, we didn't have any of that association with it.
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We just had this, like, futuristic, low drag.
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Styling, which is characterized Audi and, uh, let's be fair to the 5,
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000, the 100, 200 as well, right?
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Because when you put the turbo motor in, it became the 200.
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So it became cool when we put a V8 in it and started kicking button DTM.
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But you know, we'll just leave that where it is.
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It is the same car folks.
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I just want to point that out.
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The V8.
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Is the 100 with, uh, it's a D chassis.
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It wasn't that 100, a front wheel drive car.
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Yeah, they had Quattro in that too.
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And the V, so the V8 was a Quattro.
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Yes.
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And the first Trans Am cars in the United States in 89, those were Audi 5000 based
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production cars, all wheel drive Quattros.
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So the 5000 lives on as the D series chassis.
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By the way, in the A8, the A8 is the evolution of the 5000.
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Hmm.
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So there you go.
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There you have it.
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You've seen that movie Ronin, haven't you?
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Yes.
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So it's brilliant.
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Audi people, if you've not seen Ronin, it's an absolute must watch.
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I'm not even going to say anything more than that about it.
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Watch that movie.
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So.
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When I thought about your question a little bit more,
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you know, who was the best?
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I'm interested to know what you're going to say because I, I had one
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more point that I wanted to make and it's the, now the driver, I'm
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going to pin you on the driver.
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I've already said, if I had my sensible hat on, I was being paid,
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Arlen and Mikola would be my team.
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And if it was all about me, it would be Arlen and Vartanen.
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If it was me personally, if I was Lawrence Stroll, those are
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the two would be driving for me.
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Uh, if I was building my own team.
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You know, that's tough.
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I want to go with somebody that's going to bring the car home.
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So I'm going to go with a stig blumfist.
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I'm going to go with somebody that's consistently fast.
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You'd have blumfist over Mikkola.
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Love him to death, right?
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But it's just, I don't want to take the risk as a team owner.
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I want a Stig.
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I want a Salonen.
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I want a Teuvenen until Oh, no, see, I'd not even mentioned Salonen because
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he was never on the pace, was he?
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If you look at his pace next to Vatanen, it's embarrassing.
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It's like one of them was driving the T 16 and the other one was driving the 1.
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9 GTI.
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I know, but there's something that you can refine that you can work with there.
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You're consistently putting points on the board.
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The risk with Vatanen was you rolled the dice.
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As to whether or not he was going to roll the car or cross the finish line.
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So with Saladin, he wasn't as fast, but he brought the car home.
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That to me, I think about it with the lens of endurance racing.
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You don't win on the first turn.
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You got to bring the car home after 12 hours or 24 hours or whatever it is.
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So you want those drivers that are consistent, but are
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also mechanically sympathetic.
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I don't know.
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So Blomqvist then, and who else?
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Ah, my heart goes out to Michelle.
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Yeah, but it's not about the heart, is it?
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You're competing in Rally.
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You know, you have to win.
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Who are you actually gonna hire?
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In 1985, until the RAC Rally, she didn't finish one round.
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That's true, that's true.
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So yeah, it's gonna be Stig and probably Hanu.
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Really?
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Yeah.
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Really?
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Wow.
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See, I would have Toyon and Raw after Arlen and Vaan.
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I'd have Raw as the third, I think, before Toyon for She if, if I was, yeah,
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if it was my team, if I was being paid by somebody else and I, you know, needed
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a balance, like I'd build it around.
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Yeah.
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Micala, Arlen, Vaan, and then Royal.
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I feel like Royal and Mic are a pretty interchangeable.
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Although Mikolas skills are more rounded, right?
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He's better at the foreign events.
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He knows all the Scandinavian events like the back of his hand.
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Mikolas is just so versatile in comparison to the others that we've, we've not
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talked about Voldegard actually.
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That's true.
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Like he's another that could be that versatile.
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There's Per Eklund, the another.
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And then there was Kankenen and there's a bunch of other ones.
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Kankenen's later, so I've left him out of the conversation.
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But he's definitely front rank, not crashed too much, kind of.
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Yeah.
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Yeah, and then you still had people coming up through the ranks like Carlos
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Sainz and Jari Matilatvala's dad, you know, things like that, running for, you
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know, Toyota and whatnot back in the day.
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So they hadn't come onto the scene yet.
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That was all group A stuff at that point.
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So I don't want to look too far afield.
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But based on what was there, it's hard.
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I mean, the other thing would have been interesting was, and this goes to 1987
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in the Pikes Peak Evo 2 S1 run by Bobby Unser is to bring Bobby Unser over from
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the States and see what he could have done in WRC in a group B car, because
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he had no problem setting the record at Pikes Peak against the Fern boys.
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in a car that he'd never driven before.
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So I think there was a lot of uncapped talent there that we
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could have maybe pulled from the U.
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S.
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as well if we could turn the clock back and give him the opportunity.
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So your answer is, who is the best Group B driver?
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Your answer is Bobby Unser.
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Oh, he's got the Pike Feet record at the time.
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No, best Group B driver at the time.
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As much as it pains me to say, it's gonna be Ari Vatanen.
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It's gonna be Ari.
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All right.
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Yeah.
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Because of the flair.
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Because of the flair and the style and, uh.
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He's Senna for me, and so I respect that.
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And I see that in his driving.
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And he's ridiculously fast.
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When you really study his driving and what he does, I tended to
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emulate his driving, especially when I learned how to road race.
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And again, I wanted to be a rally driver.
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Like, there are certain things that he does that I'm like, okay, yeah, I'd love
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to have the pedal work of Walter Worrell.
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But Where does that get me at the end of the day?
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It's I'm not power sliding for 200 yards like Ari Vatanen does
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by doing all that pedal work.
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There's something to be said about that.
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That Argentina accident where he rolls the car, right?
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They'd been over three times before.
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Yeah.
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They'd always been like roadworks or something.
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So they'd never actually done that piece of road at racing speed.
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And you think to yourself, well, there were two other Peugeots in the event.
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Why didn't they roll?
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And then you think, Oh yeah.
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They were driven by some guy who I can't remember and Salonen, that
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was why they were, whatever speed, like you just know Vartanen was
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going just way faster than this.
15:18
Yeah, but who brought the car home?
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Salonen brought the car home.
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Well, exactly.
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And who was world rally champion that year?
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Salonen.
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And to win the race, one must first finish the race.
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Finish.
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Yes.
15:28
Yes.
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Credit to Timo Salonen, even though.
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Well, you are looking at it now.
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You are struck by the way that it's a crossover between motorsport sort of
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as it was without a lot of regulation with these very long events where
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endurance, human endurance was as much a part as mechanical endurance and speed.
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You know, it is illustrated by the point that we made right at the beginning,
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that you've got cars like these mantas that are like cars of the 1970s with
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under 300 horsepower, and then you've got cars like the Quattro that's almost
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like a modern rally car, or at least in terms of, you know, turbocharged,
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four wheel drive, 300 plus horsepower.
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I don't know.
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Group B is one of those things that is never to be repeated, never to
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be replicated, never to be outdone.
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It's just an awesome time in racing.
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I think there's two people that we didn't mention.
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Looking forward into Rally's history, that if you were to talk about, like,
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the greatest of all time, you know, we talked about Formula One, you would
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be remiss if you didn't talk about Sebastian Loeb or Sebastian Ogier,
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who are multi time champions of Rally.
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And Ogier especially, I mean, he's like Lewis Hamilton.
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I mean, he's much older than Lewis Hamilton, but he is the most
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winningest Rally champion of all time.
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You know what I mean?
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And so, it's like, But if you watch him drive, who did
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he get his inspiration from?
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He's very regimented and very mechanical in his driving, like a Walter Rural.
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In the 20th century, motorsport changed in a way which, all motorsports
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changed in a way which allowed One team when they dominated to dominate
17:04
far longer, like a legacy almost.
17:07
Well, so it wasn't just Michael Schumacher.
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It was Valentina Rossi and motorcycles.
17:11
It was Jimmy Johnson in NASCAR.
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It was Sebastian Loeb in rally.
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And as it was going on, I remember thinking, well, yes, these are individuals
17:20
are great drivers, but there's also, I felt with Jimmy Johnson, particularly,
17:24
there was a lot of the Michael Schumacher thing where you'd built a great team.
17:27
around you and you and the team knew exactly what you needed to do to
17:31
maintain the competitive advantage.
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So you were able to do that week after week, month after month, year after year.
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You know, I mean, NASCAR was particularly noticeable, wasn't it?
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Because people didn't like Jimmy Johnson winning all the time.
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And he was like from California.
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So he wasn't a real.
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NASCAR guy.
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And there was all of that kind of objection going on, but I feel like Jimmy
17:49
Johnson and Michael Schumacher are both, I don't know enough about Loeb and rally
17:53
in that period, but I feel like they almost exploited the technology of the
17:56
period to create a situation where in Michael's case, you know, the gap between
18:01
him and other drivers at the end of the race was smaller than it had been a decade
18:05
before or decades before that, but you weren't able to overcome that difference.
18:11
You know, the gap was small, there was no way of overcoming it.
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So I feel it's like a technological thing.
18:15
So, you know, if we're talking about greatest rally driver of all time,
18:18
yeah, it's hard to argue with the stats of Loeb somebody like that.
18:23
But clearly these guys that we've talked about in the eighties, you
18:26
know, they wouldn't do all the events when the car wasn't competitive.
18:29
They would sit a year out.
18:31
That happens now in WRC one.
18:33
I mean, I'm a huge fan of Esa Pekka Lappi.
18:35
He's come a long way.
18:37
But there's events where he just, you know, won't show up for whatever reason.
18:40
I mean, he took a pause in Croatia to respect the death of
18:45
his friend, Craig Breen, who died two years ago now at this point.
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And so that was, you know, rally, there are still deaths even to this day.
18:52
And they're, they're tragic, unfortunately, because
18:54
trees don't move very often.
18:56
All that to say Sebastian O'Shea still races today, but he picks and
19:01
Walter rural used to do he'd pick and choose which rallies he'd go to.
19:04
And then the points people have told me the point system and rally
19:08
is the most confusing thing ever.
19:10
It's even more confusing than.
19:11
Watching Lamar where there's four classes of drivers at the same
19:15
time and all this kind of thing.
19:16
And it's true.
19:16
It is really strange the manufacturers versus the driver points and how they
19:20
can skip an event, but still not lose a position and how the penalties carry over
19:26
and this and that and the other thing.
19:27
But yeah, all that stuff that was commonplace.
19:30
As we see it now, in period of Group B, still exists today.
19:34
Those rules haven't really changed.
19:35
And then also, I'm, this is quite a cool thing actually, I'm doing this
19:40
Best of the Bay, which is, you know, I've done um, a sort of annual road
19:44
test with the Journalist Society that, you know, I'm a member of here.
19:48
It's really the only thing that I do with modern cars each year.
19:50
Once upon a time it was like, Lapping Laguna Seca in them.
19:54
And then for a minute, we've done other test routes.
19:56
Well, now they've organized it for it to be in bed with this best of the bay,
20:00
which is an annual publication, which is, you know, what's the best plumber
20:04
in San Francisco in the Bay Area?
20:06
What's the best restaurant?
20:07
You know, what's the best Indian restaurant?
20:09
What's the best?
20:09
Well, they're going to, apparently they're going to do what's the best car.
20:12
It's going to be chosen based upon the opinions of me and the other members
20:15
of the Western automotive journalists.
20:18
So I've got three days.
20:19
Test driving new cars and living in a hotel in Santa Cruz, which
20:23
I'm quite looking forward to but Awkward pregnant pause.
20:33
We hope you enjoyed another awesome episode of break fix podcasts brought
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