The comparisons are fair, but are they sensible?
Four decades ago, the World Rally Championship was set for significant regulation change with Group B’s supercars to be replaced by more mundane Group A machinery.
In the words of Walter Röhrl’s co-driver Christian Geistdörfer, such a move was akin to stepping from a rocket and onto a bicycle.
With Rally2-based machinery ready to take over from the much-lauded Rally1 generation, the feeling, the fear of the future, is not dissimilar today to where the sport was 40 years ago. Two men who know that feeling better than most are Juha Kankkunen and John Kennard.
The Finn was the world champion who bridged that gap, shifting from a victorious 1986 campaign with Peugeot to Lancia and a Delta HF 4WD which couldn’t hold a candle to the extraordinary 205 T16 E2.
“I lived the time from Group B to Group A,” Kankkunen told DirtFish. “There was a little bit of a feeling that this move would kill the sport. This time there is the move to Rally2, this doesn’t kill the sport.
“[In 1986] It felt at first that this is the end, but then it was getting a bit better. A normal person can’t see a big difference [between Rally1 and Rally2] and if you don’t have the Rally1 cars there, you have nothing to compare with and the fast guys will be fast anyway. It was the same when we went to Group A, if somebody would have come with the Group B car [in 1987] then they would have looked at [Group A] and said: ‘This is rubbish.’”
Kennard, who began his WRC career co-driving Brent Rawstron’s Toyota Starlet on the 1985 1000 Lakes, agreed with Kankkunen.
“I’m old enough to remember Group B out and Group A in,” he said, “and it’s exactly the same scenario as it is right now – everybody felt the same way. The feeling was that the sport was going to absolutely die. It could never survive taking away these all-powerful cars and moving us to slower cars.
“And what happened? It became popular again. We have to be optimistic about the future; the changes for next year will bring opportunity.”
Kennard says the past proves we need to be optimistic for the future
The spectacle, then, is safe. Good. But before we go, there’s still time for another Kankkunen story.
Just weeks after winding 1986 and closing the door for the final time on the Peugeot, he was opening the door to a Lancia for the first time at his pre-Monte Carlo test.
“We started the test,” he said. “I drove about two kilometers and after one and a half, [Juha] Piironen said: ‘Now, show me flat out.’
“I said: ‘I have been from the start already…’ He looked at me and said: ‘Oh Juha, it’s going to be a long year… We will spend half more time on the stages than we do with the Group B car!’
“It was like that, but it came a bit better and the cars quickly became faster.”
