On July 11 is a very important day for the sport. Most fans associate this day with Italy's victory in the 1982 World Cup, but also in the world of motorsport something happened just as historic.
It was 1987 . The zero year for excellence in the world of rallying, the first race season with the Group A cars after the abolition of the "monsters" called Group B . A change dictated by the inhuman performance achieved by those means, the main protagonists of numerous fatal accidents. But the parts of Colorado , in the United States, there is a race that has always made an exception to the regulations subject to all other competitions.
We are talking about none other than the Pikes Peak , legendary hillclimb held since its inception on 4301 meters above sea level of the mountain of. It was along those 19,974 km of gravel mixed asphalt road that was accomplished the great work of Walter Rohrl .
World Rally Champion in 1980 and 1982, the German appeared in that edition of the crazy American race at the wheel of an equally insane Audi S1 , the car with which he won the last victory in the World Rally Sanremo in 1986. But that ' exemplary of the house of the four rings, albeit pushed up exasperation from a performance point of view, he had nothing to do with the model assembled specifically for the Pikes Peak. 600 horses for 590 Nm of torque at 1000 kilograms of weight , all seasoned with aerodynamic appendages such as to detract from any car from the track.