Too Fast to Race DVD

Too Fast to Race DVD

The ‘Group B’ International Motorsports Category was conceived in the late seventies as a return to the good old days when amateur and factory teams alike could run the same production-based cars in either sports car racing or championship rally events. By the early eighties the class had become the ‘Godzilla’ of the rally scene and what resulted were the most awesome cars ever seen on the rally stages of the world – 600 horsepower, 4WD, turbocharged monsters that could cover forest, tarmac or gravel stages faster than anything ever seen before or since. In 1986 the door was slammed shut on the F1 cars of mountain and forest roads. Faster and faster cars combined with wilder and crazier crowds meant that within the confines of rally car competition the group B rocket ships were just “too fast to race.”

The legacy of Group B, however, is a whole range of spectacular cars that continue to thrill enthusiasts. Features the Ford RS200, Lancia 037 Rally, Lancia S4, MG Metro 6R4, Peugeot 205/T16, Audi Quattro, Renault 5 Turbo, Opel, Citroen also the amazing Ferrari 288GTO Evoluzione, Jaguar XJ220 supercar and Porsche 959 – the car that came closest of all to fulfilling the Group B ethos. It won both the Paris-Dakar and its class in the Le Mans 24 Hour Race!

Includes awesome action footage and stunning close ups.

Jacky Ickx: His Authorised Competition History

Jacky Ickx: His Authorised Competition History

Jacky Ickx is one of the true greats of motor racing. In a career spanning nearly 40 years, he was both highly successful and hugely versatile, racing at the highest level in a wide variety of categories — including Formula 1, sports cars, touring cars and rally raids — and winning throughout.

Among many accolades, he won the Le Mans 24 Hours an unprecedented six times and twice finished runner-up in the Formula 1 World Championship. This exhaustively researched book has been written with his full co-operation and outlines every one of the 565 races that he contested in cars and on motorcycles, forming a detailed and insightful record of his racing life supported by over 850 photographs, many of which have never been published before.

  • Starting in motorcycle trials, Ickx was twice crowned Belgian champion before switching to four wheels; he immediately proved himself a winner in touring cars and single-seaters, becoming European Formula 2 Champion in 1967.
  • From 1967, he established himself as a star in sports cars, driving blue-and-orange Gulf Mirages and Ford GT40s to numerous successes, culminating in his first Le Mans victory in 1969 with its famously close finish.
  • Snapped up by Ferrari for 1968, he achieved a heroic first Formula 1 victory in that year’s rain-soaked French Grand Prix, confirming his career-long reputation for peerless driving in wet weather.
  • Other than one season with Brabham, Ickx spent his best Formula 1 years with Ferrari, achieving eight wins in the period 1968–72, and twice finishing second in the World Championship standings, with Brabham (1969) and Ferrari (1970).
  • Post-Ferrari, his Formula 1 fortunes waned but he thrived in sports cars, claiming three successive Le Mans victories, with Mirage in 1975, then with Porsche.
  • After his fifth Le Mans win in 1981, the rebirth of sports car racing in the Group C era from 1982 saw Ickx as anchorman in the all-conquering works Porsche team, a four-year period that brought his record sixth Le Mans victory, 12 wins in total, and two World Champion titles.
  • After retirement from circuit racing, his later career took him into entirely different motorsport adventures in rally raids, where his Paris–Dakar record includes victory in 1983 (driving a Mercedes-Benz) and second places in 1986 (Porsche) and 1989 (Peugeot).

This is a racing driver’s biography of exceptional depth that all motorsport enthusiasts will treasure.