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Old 27 Dec 2002, 07:50 (Ref:457985)   #11
racer69
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racer69 should be qualifying in the top 10 on the gridracer69 should be qualifying in the top 10 on the grid
The worst thing about Procar was that it pretty much killed off the World Touring Car Championship, European Touring Car Championship and Group A as a whole.

Bernie probably knew that Procar/Formula S wouldn't suceed, but as Group A had big interest from the manufacturers, much like Group C Sportscars did also later on, some of which weren't in F1 and he wanted them (How else do you explain the 3.5 litre Sportscar regs, which conveniently had the likes of Mercedes, Peugeot and Jag (though Ford owned) competing in that rather than F1). Also the way Group A was then, with plenty of strong local series, the theory went that one day it could rival F1, especially with Strathmore in charge of the WTCC. Bernie though took care of that

On Group S rallying, quite a few cars were built. Audi built a car, Skoda had a car, Opel were working on the Kadett. This was meant to replace Group B going by the 'Motorsport' article from October 2000. This was canned because FISA (read Balestre) didn't want to deal any longer with the manufacturers involved in rule making, which stretched back to the problems with the Monte Carlo rally being dropped initially from the 1985 WRC.

There's also been some ill-fated revival's. The WTCC was talked about returning in 1989 as an F1 support, but didn't happen, and the ETC was talked about for 1993, but a suitable formula couldn't be found due to every country doing their own thing Touring Car wise.
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