This is footage of German rally legend, Walter Rohrl, driving the monstrous Audi S1 at some kind of historic rally event. The S1 was introduced in 1985 as an update to the original Audi Quattro rally car. It has a 2.1 liter turbo inline 5 that produces over 500 horsepower at 8,000 rpm. The engine produces a very unique exhaust note with some definite similarities to a high revving V10.
I’ve posted highlights from the Global Rallycross Championship (GRC), but I came across ESPN’s full coverage of the events yesterday. I think they may have come up with a pretty successful formula. This is the first year of the GRC and they are schedule for 5 events. 4 of them coincide with NASCAR races and the 3rd round will be held at X-Games in Las Vegas. It’s exciting because it combines the best parts of rally racing in a wheel to wheel format in a small closed course which include a tactical shortcut that can be taken once during each heat after the first lap. The second round at Texas Motor Speedway also had a pretty massive gap jump. I highly recommend watching these entire videos if you’ve got the time. I promise they’re more exciting than most of the stuff you’ve got recorded on your DVR.
Chris Duplessis of the Dirtfish Rally School won the Susquekannock Trail Round of the 2012 Rally America Series in a Ford Fiesta R2. The FWD rally car looks very well sorted in the footage and it adds to the current model Fiesta’s reputation of rally success already formed in WRC and with the hooligans in the Global Rally Championship.
You know there’s something special going on when a guy who reviews supercars for a living is awestruck about riding in several of his dream cars and meeting his heroes all in one place. That’s exactly what happened when Chris Harris was invited to Pirelli’s launch of their new historic rally tire. Oddly enough, he wasn’t allowed to drive any cars equipped with the new tire, but Pirelli had four time WRC champion Juha Kankkanen, rally legend Markku Alen and 6 time Italian rally champion Paolo Andreucci there driving all of Lancia’s Group B rally monsters along with a few modern rally cars. Chris gets to go for a ride in a Lancia Stratos, the twincharged Lancia Delta Integrale S4 and the only two wheel drive car to be the Audi Quattro, the Lancia 037. It’s an amazing collection of some of the greatest rally cars ever built and we’re lucky enough to see them in action and have Chris Harris describe their natures to us.
This is a casual tribute to the rally cars of the 80’s and 90’s. All of the footage seems to be fan filmed from the sides of the stages. There’s no music, just the sounds of the engines. The cars are loosely categorized starting with the Group B monsters of the early 80’s, then Group A in the late 80’s to early 90’s and then the start of the modern day WRC era in the late 90’s.