RE: 40 years of the WRC

[Andy ap]

Mine would probably be

Petter solberg - Subaru
Richard burns - Peugeot (could you meet a nicer guy)
Ari vatanen - Watching videos of him on the isle of man rally with his superman reflexes
Colin Mcrae - For what he did for rallying in britain on the whole
Mikko Hirvonen - For being the only one (in my eyes) to snap constantly at Loebs heels (plus i have his autograph somewhere from when we had to stop him due to an accident on the cambrian rally when marshalling)

Michelle mouton deserves a shout too to proove that women can drive and drive bloody well at that........When they actually want to.

[Behemoth]

The WRC started as a manufacturer's championship in 1973. So your feature ought to focus squarely on the cars, not the drivers.

Do this article again in 2019 for the 40th anniversary of the driver's championship.

[Kitchski]

Ian_C said:

Philippe Bugalski RIP

Death is never a nice thing, but I can't help but feel guilty at chuckling at the fact he spent his life driving around metres from potential death, and actually died falling out of a tree (according to Wikipedia)!

Bizarre!

[Krikkit]

Surely Ragnotti in a 5 or Clio has to go in this list as well?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WClJNx8V280

[V8 Fettler]

[old git] All got a bit tame after the end of Group B [/old git]

[Marc p]

Mine would have to be:

Colin McRae - Subaru
Richard Burns - Subaru
Tommi Makinen - Mitsubishi
Carlos Sainz - Toyota
Sebastian Loeb - Citroen

[smilo996]

Anyone who won in the Delta Integrale. Juha Kankkunen, great name and winner in 2 of the best cars. Delat Integrale and T16.

Sees PH has caught a dose of Americanitis:

PH picks five stand-out heroes,

The laugh out loud and go to persons with a dose of LOL and OMG.

How about risen above the best heroes, better than the others heroes, the winningest Hall of Fame Driving divas of all, ever or the really really good heroes.

Come on PH, some eloquent use of the English language never hurts. How about Deserving, Ultimate or Superlative. We can take words of more that five letters.

[rwindmill]

Alex Langheck said:

Ah, 40 years of the WRC. The only driver to rival Loeb as an ‘all round’ talent is Rohrl. Won the Monte in a Fiat131, Opel Ascona 400, Lancia 037 Rallye & an Audi Quattro – the sign of a genius – something even Loeb didn’t do.
Don’t forget Kankkunen; won the WRC 4 times, and for 3 different Manufacturers, and in GpB and GpA – and won events in the WRCar era.
So many great memories, so many great events, cars, drivers that captured the imagination of not only the motorsport fans, but also the general public.

Sadly the last 10 years has seen a succession of decisions taking the sport down a cul-de-sac and shooting itself in the foot.
Next year will see a WRC season without Safari, Sanremo, Corsica, Acropolis and NZ – Is there any wonder it’s struggling?

Not sure i would ever class Loeb as an all round talent. Superb driver yes, and as the article says he mastered the new style of driving requried by the WRC generation of cars (boring style in my opinion, and detrimental to the sport ever since it came in). But all of Loeb's wins have come with one team. The Xsara and the C4 were essentially the same car under the skin.

He is very much like Makkinen in that respect, and Biasion.

True all rounders
Rohl: Fiat, Lanci, Audi, Opel
Kankunnen: Toyota, Lancia, Ford, Subaru
Toivonnen: Talbot, Opel, Lancia, Porsche

[Zajda]

tobinen said:

One of favourite ever (rumoured) stats was that Toivonen lapped the Estoril GP circuit in the S4 and it would have been fast enough for row 6 in F1 - however there seems some doubt as to whether this is true. Pretty sure Autosport mentioned it at the time but my memory is not that good. I really hope there is some truth to it

Was only a tale, supposedly about '86 Estoril GP an 6th quali position. 6th time that year was 1:18,1 on 4350m long track => averaging 200,5 Km/h or 124,6 mph in your money. No way for Delta to achieve or even beat that without cutting most of the corners through grass :-)

[TankRS]

Great article.

Also nice to see some WRC love on the front page

It's tough compiling any sort of list of best driver/car combo for any discipline, as there will always be someone who is on that list that everyone else disagrees with.

Its difficult for me to make a list, as I missed out on the 'golden era' of pre GrpA due to being a 'young un',

so the drivers that I remember and the reasons for are -

McRae - Subaru & Ford
The man that opened my eyes to the WRC and the glorious sound of an antilagged Boxer Engine at stupid o'clock in the morning, in a damp Welsh forest stage behind my house
When he made the move to Ford, I was thrilled being a Ford fan, and won out of the box in the Focus at Monte Carlo it was almost perfect for me, just a shame they got disqualified on technical issues.

Marcus Gronholm & Mikko Hirvonen - For being 2 of the drivers to really push Loeb in his early dominance, and beating him every so often.

Petter Solberg - Such an enthusiastic driver and genuine nice guy! he really lives by the 'This is my life' motto that he's adopted during his WRC/Motorsport career.

Markko Martin - A driver to this day I believe would have prevented Loeb from conquering the WRC the way he has had his career not been struck with such tragedy. A genuine nice guy too.

Of course I've spent vast amounts of time looking over 'classic' rally footage, so Rorhl, Vatanen & Toivonen are all favourites, but each in their different reasons.


Personally I never clicked with Burns. I know many many people say you couldn't meet a nicer guy. but I always felt with him that he felt he deserved to be a winner/champion, and would often seem to throw his toys out if things didn't go his way.

Ved said:

"Good God!"

think you'll find his actual words were " ohhhh Dear GOD!"

[thebigmacmoomin]

I can still remember one of my first memories of WRC.

Carlos Sainz smashing his helmet through the back window of the Corolla WRC as it broke down meters away fron the finish line. May have been Rally GB where he needed the win to take the title (not sure).

[TankRS]

thebigmacmoomin said:

I can still remember one of my first memories of WRC.

Carlos Sainz smashing his helmet through the back window of the Corolla WRC as it broke down meters away fron the finish line. May have been Rally GB where he needed the win to take the title (not sure).

It was GB 1998. It was the finish line of the Margam Park stage, I was there witnessing it first hand.

I remember being told, and not 100% sure its true, but had he managed to push the car over the line and gain the points needed to take the title, he still wouldn't have won it unless he'd got the car over the Finish Ramp in Cheltenham, not just the stage end?

[jith]

Dear me PH, you are really losing your touch on the articles.

Where the hell is a picture of a Quattro? It changed everything and was probably the most important rally car ever built; and no picture!!

Unbelievable.

J

[Muzzer79]

FullofBeans said:

Gwyndaf Evans in the Seat WRC car. It was a short lived stint but was one of the few later exciting drivers IMHO

Much as I'm a Gwyndaf fan (especially from his Group N Escort days) I don't think his name can justifiably be mentioned in an all-time-greats-of-WRC article, considering he didn't even win one event....

[Behemoth]

jith said:

Dear me PH, you are really losing your touch on the articles.

Where the hell is a picture of a Quattro? It changed everything and was probably the most important rally car ever built; and no picture!!

Unbelievable.

J

It is because the focus is on drivers, despite this 40th WRC anniversary being about the manufacturer's championship (the drivers didn't get a full award until 1979)

Were it a feature about the cars, I'd agree with you. And request the Stratos and the Integrale.

[Ollieb7]

Great topic and obviously so emotive for a number of us with so many favorites. Crying shame we are celebrating 40 years with a championship that is so piss poor.
Give us cars that move about a stage, look great, sound great, with less electronics to ruin it - all the elements that would make it a great spectator sport again please - 997 GT3s on a stage aint too far off...

[Bob_Defly]

dublet said:

Anyone know where I can get a poster of that, it's a spectacular image.

[chris285]

BelperJim said:

This is worth a watch after reading this article. A fair few WRC cars from the past doing their thing...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZsXqOj7HGM

hairs on the back of my neck went up when the quattro s4 was on, the sound is amazing

[nigelpugh7]

40 years eh, that must mean I have been watching it since it started!

There are some great reminders here of the glory years.

Sadly it's a thing of the past, and the Rally GB or whatever it's called these days is a shadow of its former self, it was at its greatest back in the Lombard RAC days.

We decided to do something different this weekend, and went up to Scotland for the Tour of Mull.

We had a fantastic time, and it was just like the old school days:-

http://youtu.be/11nAoXhN73w

Fantastic stuff!

[WMP]

Mcrae on the Tour de Course was always a spectacle to behold, the speed & accuracy was unbelievable (most of the time). To be honest his driving was always a spectacle of TOTAL commitment. I've many a good memory of standing freezing cold in a forest in South Wales waiting for him to come past.

Other drivers worthy of mention are Marcus Gronholm in the 206WRC, he was/is vastly under rated and also Gilles Panizzi on any tarmac rally driving a Peugeot 206WRC or 306 Formula 2.