The Absolute INSANITY of Group B Rally

Group B Rules, the car must have 4 wheels, rules end.

The most batshit insane racing series. The most batshit insane drivers The most batshit insane cars The most batshit insane spectators

Timo Salonen looking like a radio shack employee, wearing glasses, and smoking a pack between stages. Elite

Group B was the Rally equivalent of "Hold my beer."

Fun fact: Michele Mouton is now FIA Safety Delegate, and works WRC events! Her job includes telling people off for standing where cars could crash to. There's an FIA video about it.

I remember seeing a comment somewhere about how the drivers just saw the spectators as trees. If they saw them as people, they couldn't drive.

Even Slapshoes respects the time honored tradition of slapping some Dark Synthwave music over clips of Group B rally.

"Name a combination of YouTuber and subject you didn't know you needed." This is my answer.

Maybe to give you an idea about the absolute insanity that was Group B. The Lancis Delta S4 was Lancias purppose build Group B car and their answer to the likes of the Peugeot 205 or the Audi Sportsquatro. It was one of the first cars designed with computer technology, it used stuff like electrically timed direct injection and more. It had a mid mounted 1.8 L 4 cylinder engine which was both super and turbocharged. The official power output was about 450 hp, but many said that it was more like 500+ hp in actuallity. And they apparently were able to crank it up to 1000 hp at 5.5 bar on the testing block. The whole car barely weighted a ton. And they once did a track test at Estoril with a cranked up 800 hp version that laped only a few seconds of the F1 cars at the time, which were in their own turbo steroid age with power trains cranking out 1000+ hp in qualifying settings on a regular basis. So yeah, they drove cars with F1 level performance with barely any saefty meassures and on tiny wheels on gravel, dirt and ice, with humans as the track frontier. What could possibly go wrong.

The real insane people who stand in the middle of the road when a 1000000+ RPM rally car is barreling towards them

Look man, to each their own, I love and appreciate all motorsports (F1, WEC, Nascar, etc.) but i will never understand how someone can watch a rally and not immediately consider it the greatest motorsport in the world. It's literal art, the sound, the dust clouds, the locations of the stages.

The thing that still gets me the most about GroupB is the time period. This was the 80s. Not the 70s, 60s, or 50s. Everything else had been pretty well sanitized by then, but rally just got even more insane.

Group B is what happened when the pursuit of speed at any cost caused casualties. It was bonkers but I'm glad the sport is safer than ever.

As an F1 fan, Jean Marie Balestre and the FIA in general is something you NEED to look into. Balestre was a literal SS officer for Occupied France, his successor Max Mosely was the son of the fascist British politician Oswald Mosely, and the antics that both men got up to could fill TOMES.

you have the perfect combination of the knowledge, editing and resources that bigger influencers get but you still seem like a real person that I can understand and relate to. Great channel

In the words of 1995 WRC champ Colin McRae, "If in doubt, go flat out!" Great video as always S1ap. Respect from this UK fan.

My mom used to live right above a Lancia dealer, and she still remembers the time one of their rally cars was exposed there: the Lancia Delta S4, the last of Lancia's Group B cars, known in Italy as "Ammazza Rally" (Rally Killer) for its astonishing performance. Sadly Lancia has become a farce of a constructor as of now, but they'll probably make a comeback in WRC with the new Ypsilon. It's really great to hear you talk about racing series outside of the US, I would love to hear more in the future.

Everyone involved in Group B were insane. The drivers, engineers, co-drivers, fans, everyone. Oh, and love the random FFX track.

Lest we not forget the car that Ferrari was going to enroll into Group B had it continued, the 288 GTO Evo. But, it came too little too late and never competed.

I'm surprised that they haven't made a Michele Mouton movie. Her story is legit super interesting and deserves a movie.