I wanted to bend some corners for this week’s Parting Shift so that’s why I went hunting in the world of hillclimb racing. These courses are challenging and fast with lots of corners, short chutes, and other areas where guys are constantly shifting, sliding, and grabbing gears in an effort to cover the distance in a quicker time than anyone else. Everything from ex-formula cars to ex-rally cars compete along with freshly built tube chase creations and modified stockers as well. In this case we are literally in the belly of the beast. We’re sitting inside a Group B Audi Quattro S1 rally car, one of the most fearsome beasts ever created for this type of stuff.
We have beaten the story of Group B into your head but the synopsis was that the FIA created a class with more relaxed rules and it resulted in cars that were insanely powerful, insanely fast, and in some cases deadly. The escalation was not plotted on a graph in a nice curve, the escalation was vertical and the class was killed off before more drivers and spectators were. Thankfully some of the car still remain and this one, driven by Josef Beres gives us a prime lesson in what made these things so monstrous.
Beres is shifting, steering, sliding, and working the wheel like a mad man during this video and he executes some of the most sexy slides you will ever see in your life in the 1:05 to 1:10 mark. Pay attention to how hard this thing pulls out of a corner as well. It’ll knock your socks off.
For a video that is a shade under two minutes long, you’ll be amazed at how much of the car gets used. Literally every element of this thing was tested in one way or another by the end. We know the rally stuff is not everyone’s cup of tea but let’s be honest, you’d LOVE to try this!!
