Group C was loved. Then the FIA started fiddling with it. Then it died.
Was that because of power at the FIA? Because Bernie didn’t want anything challenging Formula One? Because the FIA wanted all the money it could get from both? All of the above? Let’s have a look.
Reddit Post by Cookie Monster: https://www.reddit.com/r/wec/comments/bxu52g/le_mans_legeds_35l_the_downfall_of_group_c/
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Ecclestone had a hand in this and pushed hard for it with the FIA. He knew that the mfrs wouldn't want to spend the money on WEC and would prefer to justify their costs in F1. He was right.
Balestre always looked like he's disgusted at literally everyone.
BACK UP A LITTLE BIT MATE….GOOOD VID
FUCK THE RULES
I've always felt the FIA sabotaged Group C sports car racing, because it was as good a spectacle as F1
I always felt that all the Group C Teams should've got together, formed their own body to run the series, and told the FIA to piss off. Sports car racing hasn't been the same since the FIA interfered
FIA Fucking with another series? Shocked!
Sports car racing and F1 were nothing alike, not even close. Endurance car racing were just that, endurance races, F1 are sprint races by comparison. The changes the FIA made, ruined the things that made the series what it was. The GT1 series is as close to great Sports Car racing as there's been since the death of Group C. ASCO and all the Group C teams should told the FIA to beat it, and run the series on their own
6:17 Thank you! The Mazda 787b being banned for being too fast is one of the most annoying myths the internet spreads. It wasn’t fast enough to get banned, it won because of a well executed effort by Mazda and Oreca that year in what is an endurance race after all. Although I did not know that they were operating under a loophole to run it.
The horsepower figure of the bmw engine was claimed to be 1300 hp already back in 1986. You can find plenty of replays for qualifying sessions from 1986 where they mention it.
The ACO didn’t want to add chicanes on the Mulsanne straight either, but the FIA threatened to take the race of the WSPC calendar if the circuit modifications weren’t done.
Modena… Nice! 😂
It was a Max and Bernie plot to kill sports cars. I read it in a book about bernie but can't remember by who.
Just for the algorithm
I think WEC could make some shorter races like imsa does, but therefore the calander should be expanded..and it might be hard to sell those ideas to track owners. But something like a 2-3 hour race at the Nürburgring a week or two before or after spa could work out nicely
I was a big fan of group C and I actually remember some details in the light you describe towards the end of the vid (I have not read the cookie monster article):
The master mind behind the 3.5 formula was definitely Bernie Ecclestone. Bernie was irritated by the fact the Gr C had big manufacturers (Porsche, Merc, Jag, Toyota, Mazda, Lancia/Fiat) and also Eurosport visibility. And of course Max Mosley was always Bernie's wingman. They remembered how the group 4 (917, 512) big "sports cars" was destroyed at the end of 1971: in essence by that you were forced to move in the group 6 prototype class with 3-liter (F1) engine. The claim was that having more F1 engines they become cheaper to run …. Ever heard that before? . This very much lead to Ferdinand Piëch starting despise both FIA (CSI) and F1. And of course, he had despised French (especially Peugeot family) ever since they locked his father to prison after the war. It was always an impossibility that Porsche would join F1 as long as Ferdinand Piëch was alive.
An interesting detail of how the voting was done for the Gr. C 3.5-formula. The meeting was at Heathrow airport and. e.g. Jean Todt was told he can vote by phone. Well come the time he couldn't. His vote was rejected on the base that it was not allowed in the rules. And at that time Pug was not behind the idea. Porsche certainly was not. But you are right in that Porsche actually had bigger problems in their hand at that time going fast towards bankcrupty. Their factory effort was highly likely coming to end in any case. Though they have always had profitable customer racing branch.
One important background piece of information is that the 956/962 was actually relatively economic car to race. The customer cars were built so that you did not need to rebuild the engine a single time during the season as long as you changed oils, turbos twice a season and did regular maintenance. They had excellent factory services at tracks for customers. If you took a C2 Cosworth engine you needed a complete and expensive rebuild after every so miles.
And in the end Bernie succeeded. Max was occupying the top of FIA, manufacturers started to shift towards the unbelievably expensive F1. There was no competitor in the Eurosport channel. But none of the Ecclestone journos like Saward could not change Porsche's stand even if they how tried to cry that water is dry. And on the Sports car scene there was the WSC barely surviving until ACO took a stand and developed the LMP1 and 2 which had its natural era. Now the whole sport has shifted so much towards entertainment with all the DRSess, power stages, sprint rallies, internet, TV-series and now they try the hyper car idea for prototypes.
Times change and water runs under the bridge. The best racing today is in Historic series. And I believe Porsche actually has limited will to get in the F1 today even if the sawards yell what they yell. Maybe they will but they have a strong brand that does not necessarily need F1. Also to consider is that a large part of the shares will be diffused from the Porsche-Piëch -family by going public. Family, which like any family suffers from diluting unanimity by every new generation.
The world has become such a weird place: F1 value is claimed to be 20 000 millions. Imagine what happens to ticket prices if the is true.
Iets 7. All
You know you're in too deep when you slightly cringe on the inside when you hear somebody refer to a Wankel as a rotary and you actually know what a rotary engine is and how it operates
Have you experienced a top fuel grenade…… sorry dragster?
Please do a video on drag racing. 🙏
Lovin the sarcasm. BMW horsepower going up by 200 in 20 secs rather than every 5 years in commentary. Still the engine blocks used were recycled diesel units
I also think that the 405 was the logical successional name to the 404 and absolutely FA to do with LM, as in 504-505 and 205-206 etc
The "3.5L everything" concept even spread (at least as an idea) to Indycar in the early '90s. Once Tony George had been given a voice in hopes of appeasing him so he wouldn't do something stupid like split the championship, rumors were flying that CART and USAC (which continued to run just the Indy 500 somewhat like the ACO at Le Mans) were finally going to fully harmonize their technical regulations, and the new engine formula was going to be 3.5L, normally aspirated, 8-12 cylinders, specifically with a view toward equaling F1 and Group C in hopes of drawing more manufacturer support. Of course this was right when Ford and Cosworth had just invested heavily in the XB for the 2.65L turbo formula, Honda and Toyota were on the doorstep, Porsche and Alfa had just left, and Mercedes was about to replace Chevy as the badge-engineererer for Ilmor, so manufacturer support was hardly a problem, and the idea was shelved. Tony George eventually got his 3.5L NA formula but…probably not the way anyone would have liked.
So a video that details the death of Group C and leaves out the amazing event that was the 2022 Le Mans Classic? If it came down to entries and not advertising $, this event would be bigger in exposure than all but a handful of top current era events. Seems to me like you’re only telling half the story.
I liked these arms races. It really brought innovation and smart ideas. It was not perse about budgets. There was room for creativity and strange designs. Go back to a fixed amount of fuel measured in KJ and minimum weight and some aeroregulations. Let them all do their thing that fits their "dna".
I swear the motorsports history could be shortened to "and then FIA fucked it up". Like sure, they did some good work with safety but it seems like one good comes with 2 bads.
That Silk Cut Jaguar XJR brings back so many memories. What a stunning machine.
3:53: The first Brit to ever give it a try! One giant leap! Thanks Aidan!
11:49 Not trying to visualize that 🙈