[Rich T UK]

I find this sort of thing odd, criticising a racing car manufacturer for building the best car they could, within the rules...

If the rules allow such huge loopholes, then surely it's the fault of those who framed the regs in the first place. If you write the rules so badly that you can drive moby dick or a 962 staight through them, you can hardly start complaining when someone turns up with the white whale.

Diddling rondeau out of a championship seems a little underhanded, though.

Wasn't the thing with the 917 in 69 that the cars were built, then between the Le Mans test and the race, the ruling body changed the rules?

 

[Rich T UK]

there's a good section in peter morgan's "the enduring champions" about the dauer car- whatit shared and what it didn't share with the 962.

as I remeber it, the mechanicals were similar, but not identical, and the aero was very different. all the bodywork was different and the big venturis the group C car had were gone because of the GT rules. basically it was a 962 with a fraction of the downforce and narrower tyres. From what I remember of the book, the drivers quite liked it, because it wasn't as physically demanding as the group C car...

It seems the regulators thought that having to get a car through a country's approval process would rule out too extreme a car, but you only have to think of the sort of stuff people have managed to road-register (such as a 917) to realise how much of a bad idea this was...