circuits

Speaking of cars, my father has always told me “why do you want 200 HP if you can only go 120 km/h?” Someone had to say that to the manufacturers who, in the nineties, registered beasts with more than 600 HP designed for driving on the street. Le Mansbut with which someone could go on a picnic on a Sunday morning. They are the heirs of Group C. And they could only have been possible in one era: the 90s. Supercars with license plate The world of motorsports has a lot of rules when we talk about competition. Logic tells us that technological advances should result in increasingly faster and, above all, powerful cars. However, the organization that is in charge of regulating all this four-wheel motor competition, the FIA, has been imposing a series of rules so that the power does not get out of control. The Lancia Delta S4, the Ford RS200, the Peugeot 205 T16 and the Audi Quattro, legendary group B rallies An example we saw it in the rally world. The category is extreme, with cars that accelerate like a racing motorcycle and display enormous speed. However, in the 80s, manufacturers began to modify both the engine and the chassis, taking it to the extreme and creating spectacular machines. Accelerations from 0 to 100 in two seconds on land. It was truly crazy. In five years, cars advanced a lot and what had to happen happened: uncontrolled power, maximum competition and pressure, insufficient safety measures and some negligence caused fatal accidents. One of the most remembered is that of Portugal in March 1986, when Joaquim Santos’ RS200 lost control and ran into a crowd, killing three spectators instantly, putting a fourth in the hospital and injuring around thirty people. In May of that year, those who died were those who were driving the car. Toivonen and Cresto lost control and fell off a cliff. The FIA ​​decided that would cut off the development of Group B because, directly, it had gone too far. And if I tell you all this nonsense it is because, in parallel to this extreme development of rally cars, Group C was also emerging. It was in 1982 when this group was introduced, designed for the competition of purely prototype sports cars. While in other categories the FIA ​​limited the engine displacement, braking power, in Group C the limitation came due to fuel. They were endurance racing cars. and control was achieved through 100 liters of capacity with a minimum of five refueling stops every 1,000 kilometers. That allowed 600 liters per 1,000 km. A stupid thing. The FIA’s intention was for manufacturers to limit themselves to improving power through turbocharging. For 20 years, Group C cars put on a show at endurance races and Le Mans, with legendary machines and racing technologies. Formula 1 who were adapting to that competition. The result? Perfect machines that reached average speeds above 200 km/h in Le Mans and peaks of 330 km/h in the Mulsanne straight. But after two glorious decades, the FIA ​​did what it does best: change everything and distort the competition. Within six years, the organization announced that it wanted non-turbo engines and races of 430 km at most (when before they were 1,000). That completely distorted the competition and the meaning of Group C. Furthermore, although the new engines would supposedly be more economical, developing them from scratch would be a great effort for the teams, so they abandoned them, and before the start of the 1993 season, the competition and the category were cancelled. This is how the GT1 was born and manufacturers like Toyota, Nissan, Porsche, Jaguar and Mercedes found themselves with hundreds of millions that were going to waste. And all this context for the girito: unless they took advantage of those supercars that, with a couple of changes, they could register and sell as a street car, taking advantage to finance the development of the cars of the newborn GT1. The Mercedes CLK that had nothing CLK, the most exclusive Nissan and the flying Porsche Taking advantage of this technology and development, the companies used the prototypes created for Le Mans to give life to a series of street supercars that shared many characteristics. They used to be carbon fiber monocoques, they had very high-power engines with sophisticated electronic management, transmission made for racing, active aerodynamics in some cases, very low weight and, in some cases, space for a cabin suitcase. The Porsche 962 When brands like Nissan, Toyota or Mercedes raced in Group C, they didn’t need to manufacture vehicles with street versions: they only focused on the most untamable beasts. However, heThe GT1 category required the production of some registrable units before validating the racing prototypes. The companies took advantage of some regulatory loopholes to get racing, but that need to have a street version caused wild racing cars to circulate directly on the streets. Our colleagues from MotorPassion They have reviewed some of the most representative specimens of this crazy period, and some stories are unbelievable. Heirs of the Porsche 962 Dauer 962 Le Mans It was one of the most representative cars at Le Mans and its chassis was taken as a reference by three manufacturers. One was the Dauer 962 Le Mansa car modified with the help of Porsche itself that had Kevlar panels, a flat floor for stability, a second leather seat, hydraulic suspension and a trunk in the front. The engine had 730 HP and, as it was one of the firstachieved approval by producing only 13 copiesnot the 25 street prices that would be requested later. How did they manage to homologate a racing car so that it could circulate on public roads? Through a hydraulic suspension that allowed the car to be raised up to 10 centimeters and, after passing some emissions and crash tests, the German ITV gave the go-ahead. There were some more heirs from 962, such as Schuppan 962R of which only … Read more