Group A - International Touring Car Formula

[jimdigris]

One part of the history of Group A was it was supposed to be by the book and no special favours or considerations granted, aka what was destroying Group C. Group A in Europe was a dogs dinner, all the major teams cheated, most had gentlemen agreements bewteen each other to look the other way. Australia was by the book for the first two years, who can forget the arguement in pit lane between one team and the scrutineers over whether the tyre width could be measured with the car on jacks or on the ground. technically the team was right, the tyre could be measured with no weight, but the scrutinners insisted it couldnt be, and that year that team went into hardies heroes and the race with undersized rubber. Interestingly that same race Grice stuck by his guns and ran with the tyres measured legal off the ground, but illegal on the ground, yet no protests were made and the officials did nothing. There were many interesting points of contention in group a, dozens in fact, here is one you may not have heard of. The Shell cars were a running dual actuator bypass valve on their RS500s, whereas a single actuator was homologated. The dual was from the previous Cosworth, not the RS500. Several teams protested, including the Colin Bond Caltex team. DJR successfully argued the actuator was an "accessory" and hence "free". After that decision most teams started using the dual actuator system, including Bond. But to take it to an extreme, at one major race Bond argued that the turbo was an "accessory" when his turbo rotor was picked up as non-standard in pre-scrutineering, and hence "free"! lol, the cheek!

[Ray Bell]

Originally posted by jimdigris
One part of the history of Group A was it was supposed to be by the book and no special favours or considerations granted, aka what was destroying Group C. Group A in Europe was a dogs dinner, all the major teams cheated, most had gentlemen agreements bewteen each other to look the other way. Australia was by the book for the first two years, who can forget the arguement in pit lane between one team and the scrutineers over whether the tyre width could be measured with the car on jacks or on the ground. technically the team was right, the tyre could be measured with no weight, but the scrutinners insisted it couldnt be, and that year that team went into hardies heroes and the race with undersized rubber. Interestingly that same race Grice stuck by his guns and ran with the tyres measured legal off the ground, but illegal on the ground, yet no protests were made and the officials did nothing. There were many interesting points of contention in group a, dozens in fact, here is one you may not have heard of. The Shell cars were a running dual actuator bypass valve on their RS500s, whereas a single actuator was homologated. The dual was from the previous Cosworth, not the RS500. Several teams protested, including the Colin Bond Caltex team. DJR successfully argued the actuator was an "accessory" and hence "free". After that decision most teams started using the dual actuator system, including Bond. But to take it to an extreme, at one major race Bond argued that the turbo was an "accessory" when his turbo rotor was picked up as non-standard in pre-scrutineering, and hence "free"! lol, the cheek!

I must admit that I never heard either of those stories, but I wasn't all that close to the game by 1986...

I was there, however, for the post-race press conference after the Eggenberger car had 'won' at Bathurst. Brock was casual, even though the 'press' pushed him hard trying to get some sort of negative comment about the fuel issue (a sample of the fuel at one stop had come up funny).

He simply got into explaining that those cars had knock sensors and it wouldn't have made any great difference to them...

Of course, the pursuit of the inner guard alteration case was carried on with vigour and they justly outed the Sierras for that. It shows that you're right about that European agreement.

Remember, too, the Masterton car with the numberplate flapping to allow more air into the radiator?

And back a bit further, I understand that at least one of the Ron Hodgson Torana A9Xs had some work done (rack location?) to reduce bump steer.

[jimdigris]

From the FIA archives in the Jaguar XJS homologation papers. They show the details when ol Tom pulled the scam of the decade homologating the pre-may type heads despite them being long out of production. "May" type heads were restrictive and designed for swirl to get better fuel consumption, great for the then fuel crisis times but not ideal for racing. When ol tom got this "erratum" through his jags jumped from 390 to 460HP. As the rules at the time said parts like heads had to be the currently fitted to the road going car how the heck did FIA rubber stamp it? Note the visible difference in combustion chamber design and the port size difference!