Latest News
Volvo: Safety Beyond the Star Ratings
The story of the 1983 World Rally Championship is being made into a movie. Get the scoop on this retelling of Audi and Lancia’s rivalry.
Daniel Brühl’s Next Motorsport Film
Daniel Brühl portrayed F1 legend Niki Lauda in the movie Rush and voices Lightning McQueen the German version of the animated Pixar film Cars. Now, his next motorsport film is Race for Glory, a retelling of the 1983 Group B World Rally Championship. Rather than be behind the steering wheel, Brühl is put into the shoes of Roland Gumpert, Audi Sport GmbH’s Head of Sport and Special Development back in the 1980s. The movie looks at the height of Audi’s dominance within Group B Rally in which Gumpert helped Audi secure 25 World Rally Championship (WRC) wins, two Drivers’ Championships, and two Constructors’ Championships.
The German’s greatest rival during this time was Italian manufacturer Lancia Abarth. The company and their rallying success was led by Cesare Fiorio, portrayed in the movie by Riccardo Scamarcio. Lancia was a consistent thorn in Audi’s side when it came to rally racing. This motorsport’s biopic also gives us a glimpse at some famous rally racers of the era like Walter Röhrl (portrayed by Volker Bruch), Hannu Mikkola (portrayed by Gianmaria Martini), and Michèle Mouton (portrayed by Esther Garrel).
To get ready for the movie, here’s a quick look at the two cars that made Group B exciting in the early 1980s and led to this great film, the Audi Sport Quattro and the Lancia Rally 037.
The Cars of Race for Glory
While Race for Glory focuses mainly on the Audi and Lancia entrants, the 1983 Group B season was full of great cars and skilled teams. The Rothmans Opel Rally Team were the team to beat as they had won the Drivers’ Championship the year prior with the Opel Ascona 400. However, their driver had been poached to race for Lancia for the 1983 season. There was also Britain’s Talbot who had taken the Constructors’ Championship just two years earlier with the Talbot Sunbeam Lotus. Japan had entrants too in the form of the Team Nissan Europe with the 240RS, the Mitsubishi Ralliart Lancer 2000 Turbo, and Toyota Team Europe driving a Celica TCT.
Each of these teams were in the mix for a number of 1983 World Rally Championship events, but the podium was dominated by the likes of Audi and Lancia for a majority of the season.
Audi Sport Quattro
The Audi Sport Quattro was the first four-wheel-drive rally car and stands as the symbol of the Group B era. It was based off the road going Audi Quattro but stripped down, given a roll cage, and tuned for rally car racing. The original engine from 1980 was a 2,144 CC 5-cylinder 10 valve single overhead cam installed with a turbocharger and an intercooler to produce 300 horsepower. Michèle Mouton took the Audi Sport Quattro and became the first female driver to win a Walter Röhrl event at the Rallye Sanremo in 1981. She went on to take second overall for the 1982 season, just behind Walter Röhrl, but her success along with teammate Hannu Mikkola led to Audi winning the Constructors’ Championship.
In response to new Group B rules, the Quattro A1 was introduced and featured a larger 2,226 cc turbocharged 5-cylinder unit generating 350 horsepower. This evolution of the Quattro debuted for the first half of the 1983 season and won overall at both the Swedish Rally and Rally Portugal thanks to Hannu Mikkola as the driver. The Quattro A2 took over midway through the season and was able to clean sweep the podium for Rally Argentina and win Rally Finland along with a couple of other podium finishes again all featuring Mikkola in some capacity.
Audi was in the winner’s circle for the 1983 Drivers’ Championship thanks to Hannu Mikkola’s efforts, but it was Lancia who had taken their Constructors’ Championship crown.
Martini Racing Lancia Rally 037
Martini Racing has one of the most well recognized liveries in all of motorsports, but they only got that recognition through winning alongside Lancia. While the duo’s rally racing era didn’t come until the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, it was 1983 that they showed themselves as contenders. Lancia had fallen off in the rallying scene since their Stratos had a threepeat for ‘74, ‘75, and ‘76 plus a Drivers’ Championship in ‘77.
Lancia began research and development on a rally racing devoted vehicle alongside Abarth. The Lancia Rally 037 was made in strict compliance with the new Group B regulations and met the stringent guidelines of producing 200 road-going variants. It was a rear-wheel-drive setup powered by a 280-horsepower supercharged 2.0L dual overhead cam four-cylinder that was transversely mounted with a mid-engine placement. On the outside, the Rally 037 held some similarities with the Lancia Scorpion.
The debut of the Rally 037 was actually during the 1982 WRC season, but it faced a multitude of issues that led to retirements rather than podiums. The following year is when Lancia got the issues worked out of the car and employed Walter Röhrl alongside Markku Alén as their main drivers. The Lancia team won the 1983 Constructors’ Championship and Röhrl would have taken the Drivers’ one too, but the Lancia team missed the final round of the WRC series.
