1995: The Most Dramatic Season In The History Of WRC?
Ok yeah, 1986 would be another good contender as the most dramatic season. But the drama, intrigue and excitement that was packed into a season with only eight events in it is quite remarkable.
First and foremost the season is remembered for two things, McRae's only title (he deserved more) and Toyota's turbo cheat. For 1995 a smaller turbo restrictor was demanded by the regulations and this seemed to wildly affect the teams' relative engine performance to each other. In 1994 Toyota had by far the best engine in WRC and the last spec of ST185 Celicas from 1994 are really the absolute pinnacle of Group A rallying to me. It's like a mini-Group B experience to see and hear that car in action. Subaru was better in twistier roads in 1994 already, but they had no answer for Toyota's power. But mysteriously the smaller restrictor implemented for 1995 really hit Toyota very bad compared to the other teams. Mitsubishi seemed to have all of a sudden the best engine in the business and Toyota by far the worst engine, Subaru and Ford somewhere in the middle. In Monte Carlo Kankkunen and Auriol were complaining that they can't get up the hills. Toyota was nowhere in Sweden either and this is when they must have panicked. To cut a long technical story short, Toyota tweaked the restrictor so that when the turbo was installed the restrictor essentially didn't do its job anymore, allowing more air into the turbo, but when the turbo was removed (as it had to be done for inspection) the restrictor appeared to be good and legal. Toyota was estimated to have had a 50bhp advantage thanks to this tweak. I think it's clear Toyota implemented their cheat already in the third event of the season in Portugal, seven months before they were caught in Spain. All of a sudden they had clearly the most powerful engine when just before they were like Group N cars in comparison. This was demonstrated at a super special in Lousada when Kankkunen's Celica and Sainz's Impreza started side by side. Subaru had no chance in that contest. Only thing that kept Kankkunen and Auriol from romping away with victories from Portugal on, was that in tight and twisty stages the big and clumsy Celica was at a huge disadvantage to Mitsubishi and Subaru. Good example of this was the New Zealand rally which has both very twisty, but also faster stages. In the extremely twisty Motu stage Auriol lost 35 seconds alone to McRae. He lost the rally by only 44 seconds.
But then came Catalunya, relatively wide, smooth and fast tarmac stages to finally unleash the Celica. And the result was the absolutely unique occasion of Juha Kankkunen completely dominating a tarmac WRC rally! When has that ever happened otherwise? No one else had any answer to his speed. Had Kankkunen finished the drive in victory and had Toyota's cheating not been caught, only fourth place in RAC would have guaranteed Juha his fifth title, no matter how the others would have driven. But then the accident happened, which was caused by Kankkunen mishearing Grist's note "very long bad left" as "very long flat left". Every time I see the onboard video of Kankkunen's accident, I wonder if it offers a clue to what happened to Henri Toivonen in Corsica in 1986. Because Toivonen had a similar English note system to Kankkunen, including both "flat" and "bad" corner speeds and I have thought it's a big possibility he lost his life because of a similar mishearing. Both Kankkunen's and Toivonen's accidents happened in similar left handers in which entering them you couldn't see how badly it tightens in the end, the worst possible corner type for a misheard note. Also both accidents happened from a dominant lead towards the end of the second leg, when concentration isn't necessarily at its best anymore. Notes were much more simple in those days and what would nowadays be at least something like "caution, very long 4 left tightens to 3, stay in" could simply be "very long bad left".
By the way I don't think it's quite as clear cut as it has been made to look, that the drivers themselves were completely clueless to what was happening behind the scenes at Toyota, like the official story given to public goes. There are a few things that raise suspicion. Auriol's co-driver Bernard Occelli had a mysterious falling out with the Toyota team, not with Auriol, right before Corsica. Denis Giraudet stepped in and Auriol remarkably went on to win the rally with a new co-driver. I have heard from French sources that Occelli's falling out was caused by his disapproval of Toyota's cheating, which he no longer wanted to be a part of. Related to this I have seen clips from 1995 where co-drivers of the Toyota team are fiddling underneath the bonnet in the turbo area between the stages. No repair operations, but routine looking fiddling on something. Both of these things could be completely unrelated to the turbo cheating, but put together they have raised suspicion in me. Did the co-drivers at Toyota have some kind of function in ensuring the success of the cheat? It has also been speculated there must have been a whistleblower involved when finally uncovering the cheat, as otherwise no one would have ever been able to discover it. FIA president at the time Max Mosley called the cheat 'the most ingenious thing" he has seen in motorsport. Also it must have raised at least some suspicion in the drivers that an engine that was like a Group N engine in Sweden, was all of a sudden the most powerful engine in the business, there was only a couple of weeks between Sweden and Portugal. Kankkunen was directly asked this question in Portugal, but he was joking that the extra power is perhaps provided by him. :D
1995 could have also easily been the year of Sainz's third title, but he had a mountain bike accident in the Summer which caused him to miss New Zealand, one of his strongest events. With only eight events in the calendar, already missing one event in a tight Championship battle is not good news at all, not the same luxury that Loeb had in 2006. Sainz was on fire in Monte Carlo and Portugal in particular, he had an intense battle with Kankkunen in Portugal when a branch cut a brake pipe on the final stage, but he still somehow managed to win the rally. To be honest McRae outshone Sainz in the second half though after Sainz came back from his injury. This brings us to the Catalunya affair which included the Subaru team (all things put together 1995 Catalunya has to be a contender for the most dramatic WRC event in history). McRae was amazingly matching Carlos in his home ground and in his first Rally Catalunya. However, after Kankkunen's crash Subaru wanted to cool the race down, for Carlos to win at home, for the drivers to go dead level in the Championship to the final event and for Subaru to secure a good Manufacturer Championship lead, all quite understandable in retrospect. McRae seemed to accept the order at first, but then on the last day he decided not to respect it after all. Sainz was seemingly cruising on the last day whilst McRae was driving like a man possessed. Subaru team members tried to stop him on the last stage but to no avail, they would have gotten run over had they not moved away from the road. Subaru forcibly stopped him from entering the last time control on time. They probably made clear to him that he wouldn't be taking part in the RAC or continue driving for Subaru at all in the future for that matter, if he went on to win the rally. In comparison, Ogier & Citroen in 2011 is relatively mild and friendly compared to this incident. In the RAC McRae drove an epic rally though, probably the best World Championship clinching drive of all time. Interestingly enough, earlier in the year Mitsubishi had an almost identical team order affair in Sweden with Eriksson and Mäkinen. Mitsubishi decided before the last leg that Eriksson would win his home rally, Mäkinen did not respect the team order until the final metres of the last stage. Mäkinen's frustration is understandable as he was going to take the Championship lead after Sweden and must have felt at the time that he had a good shot at the title. His season turned out to be a bit of a disaster though from then on with something going wrong in every event. Also Mitsubishi decided to skip Portugal altogether for some reason which didn't help either.
It's worth mentioning as well that 1995 Corsica would have been Bruno Thiry's only WRC win had the service regulations not been changed for 1995. Drivers had to do a lot more work on the car themselves between the stages in 1995 than before, with team service restricted. This rule change was very controversial and heavily criticised at the time. Thiry was leading Corsica comfortably on the last day when a front wheel bearing broke on the road section. Thiry said it would have been only a ten minute job for the mechanics but it was impossible for him and Prevot to fix it in time and they were out of the rally. Unlike today, in 1995 this kind of last minute retirement that could have easily been prevented by mechanics was scandalous for the sport.
1995 is also the first year in WRC history when every event was won by a Japanese manufacturer, the second and last time was in 1998. We might have to wait for some time still to see that happen again. 1995 was an interesting year in WRC to say the least.
