Lots of rally fans love those old Group B monsters from the 1980’s and with good reason: They all had far more horsepower than the chassis technology was capable of managing at the time, making them absolute beasts to watch rip up gravel roads. After Henri Toivonen’s fatal Group B accident, the class was ended and cars horsepower was reduced. Today, however, the World Rally Championship’s top-class cars are limited to 300 horsepower—allegedly half the output from some of the Group B cars—yet last weekend’s Rally Finland victory by Northern Irishman Kris Meeke for Abu Dhabi Total WRT was the fastest-ever for any rally, caning his Citroen to an average of 126.6 kph (78.29 mph) over 333.9 kilometers and 24 stages in Finland’s forests.
Rally Finland is renowned for its breakneck speed—Finnish driver Jari-Mati Latvala set the record last year at 125.4 kph—and the multitude of huge jumps, or “yumps” to the local Finns. Meeks becomes not only the fastest rally driver in history but also the first British driver to win Rally Finland, whose 65-year history has seen only 12 non-Finnish winners. Latvala came second while Meeke’s countryman Craig Breen scored his first-ever WRC podium during only his third WRC rally of the year, though he is a multiple rally winner in the European Rally Championship.
Enjoy two videos from Citroen’s YouTube page cataloging both the make’s double-podium and a taste of the massive jumps—accentuated by the airborne hatchbacks’ turbocharged 2.0-liter engines beating their rev-limiters like an impossibly tight drum—during the pre-rally Shakedown stage.
