What about group "B" ??

[Zico]

Tyre grip makes the driver feel the car and the surface and is extremely important.

Lowering the levels of grip by a percentage wouldnt necessarily remove that feeling. The balance of the car may need to be worked on with maybe a slightly softer set-up to compensate but thats about it..

Something about this subject happened at the last rally in Croatia.
A driver chose to use old tyres for only one more stage,so he would save new tyres.The car was an N1 Skoda Fabia.
And it was slower alright...
And he ended up 5 meters by the road in the forest on the roof.He was fighting for the class title and he was driving fast.He entered the corner by the pace notes.He told he would never use an old tyre again...

Unfortunately accidents are part of the sport and pacenotes are rarely accuate enough to place 100% faith in. When we have accidents its natural to look for a reason or something to blame.. I blamed a rock on the inside of a corner which wasnt on the notes when I rolled spectacularly in Dec.

I've also tested Dunlops and another brand (cant be named for legal reasons) back to back.. While the Dunlops were aprox 1 - 2 secs a mile quicker, you could not really tell from the feeling or lateral grip levels what the car was shod with, just a very slight improvement on hooking up when the diff locked on coming out of the corners.

If the old tyres were to blame for this unfortunate Skoda driver I suggest its because he didnt compensate for a small reduction in grip, something all the teams would learn and be doing in testing if a low grip control tyre was introduced.

In a rally car you are always searching for that level of grip available, it changes with temperature, humidity, road positioning and many other factors, if we used your logic then we should only ever rally in dry consistant conditions. Lack of mechanical or tyre grip is not what proves fatal in an accident, the combination of speed and hitting solid objects are the real killers.

[cosmicpanda]

If you raise the point of ignition that means the fuel will ignite at a higher temperature. This means they could raise the compression ratio, run with more turbopressure, etc., which they couldn't do if they used ordinary fuel.

Ah, the point of ignition. Right.

[Daniel]

But a word of advice. Don't believe everything you read here.
There are people on this forum who would blame the FIA for their dinner being cold.
There are conspiracy theories trotted out here that the CIA would be proud of, let alone the FIA.

Perhaps true. But I'm sure I saw Max slipping onions into my curry this evening. I hate onions and Max knows it!