Cheating. By 1970 the AMC team had gotten its shit together, Penske got busted and AMC dominated Trans Am racing. In 71 Chevy pulled out, went to NASCAR and the NHRA dropping big bucks and buying rule changes that favored Chevy. They outlawed the Chrysler Hemis in both Pro Stock and NASCAR making it easier for Chevy to win both classes.


Then when the gas crunch hit and emissions standards drove the automakers to run smaller engines Chevy bought off NASCAR to us a 355 cubic inch limit. This left GM to run their motors without much problem, but Ford had trouble because a .030" overbore left them at 356 cubes. Chrysler and AMC had 360's, so those engines had to endure the expense of

being destroyed to compete. The same thing then happened in NHRA Pro Stock. So racers running Ford, Chrysler or AMC had to do a lot of expensive custom work to qualify, but Wally Booth and Dick Aarons proved the AMC could do the job. Then Bob Gliddon and Dyno Don Nicholson worked their magic to win as well. After a few years of that the rules

loosened up and pro stock cubic inch limits were raised to 500 cu inches. All manufacturers had to come up with custom parts to make use of the big cube engines. And it worked fairly well, especially when factory blocks and heads were mandated. But soon the rules changed so that anything could be run as long as it fit under the factory valve covers. Soon

after the engines being run in Pro Stock didn't come close to resembling their factory counter parts. The whole reason behind pro stock was to showcase a race car that one could buy at the dealership, and modify to run in the class. Buy on Tuesday, race on Sunday! But things got so strange that things became unrecognizable when compared to the factory

counter parts. Today's Camaros look nothing like the factory cars, with huge raised and stretched hoods and thin windshields. Not right at all. The Camaros bent their aerodynamics so much that Mopar backed out almost completely. And Ford has been gone fore a decade or so even though their new Mustang would make a killer platform for ProStock! Too bad.

Over the years there has been various cases of cheating in the WRC. In this post i am going to highlight some of the more well known and less known cases.

The side skirt scandal at Sanremo

After the death of Henri Toivonen and Sergio Cresto FISA introduced a revised set of rules for the remaining rounds of the 1986 championship. One of these was to ban the use of side skirts with immediate effect. Peugeot still continued to use the side skirts and the organisers of the Italian round, the Sanremo rally reported Peugeot to the FISA for violating the rules. Now this is where it gets interesting. The head of FISA was Jean-Marie Balestre who was french. Balestre is known for giving the French teams/drivers the advantage as FISA is based in Paris. One famous incident was moving the pole position at Suzuka to give Prost the advantage over Senna who qualified first, but thats another story. Balestre should have banned Peugeot for the rest of the season but this was not to be. He continued to allow the use of the Peugeots. All of the results were dropped from Sanremo where Markku Alen took victory with the Delta S4.Another issue was that Peugeot did not build an additional 20 cars for an evolution of the T16 which would make the 1986 car an Evo 3. The side skirts were a structural change which would have resulted in an evolution being built but FISA let Peugeot off again. Despite all of this Peugeot won the manufactures and Drivers titles in 1986.

Use of illegal fuel

Eriksson inherited 3rd place.This was rather common in motorsport in general but one case was quite ironic. At the 1000 Lakes rally in 1991 Timo Salonen’s Mitsubishi was excluded for the use of illegal fuel. Ironically enough, Timo’s third place was inherited by his team mate Kenneth Eriksson whose fuel had not been tested. It was suspected that Eriksson was also running the fuel but no testing was ever done.At the 1993 Sanremo rally Carlo Sainz was excluded for illegal fuel.

Toyota's Turbo scandal

In the history of WRC the most blatant case of cheating is Toyota’s illegal turbo discovered at Rally Catalunya 1995. On one hand, it was piece of brilliant engineering but on the other hand it embodied the desperation that TTE was in to make latest Celica competitive. Toyota forced the team to use Celica as a base for their programme, even though car was not ideal for the purpose.Toyota has some of the best engineers in the world. Every car is inspected before the rally by by the governing body to make sure that the restrictor plate is installed. Toyota engineered a way to allow air in to the turbo intake that completely bypassed the seals around the restrictor. Additionally when the car was moving and the turbo was engaged, the restrictor plate would be moved back a couple of inches completely nullifying the effect of the restrictor plate. Some of the best judges and techs had gone over the car to make sure cheating like this were not taking place. In fact, the engineering was so good that when the turbo was disassembled post-race for inspection, judges couldn’t find any evidence that extra air had passed through the turbo. Toyota had manufactured special springs and clips that would move the restrictor plate back from the air intake, but when the turbo was disengaged the springs would pop it back in to position making it appear that everything was as per the FIA rules.Max Mosley, the president of the FIA at the time said this: “Inside it was beautifully made. The springs inside the hose had been polished and machined so not to impede the air which passed through. To force the springs open without the special tool would require substantial force. It is the most sophisticated and ingenious device either I or the FIA’s technical experts have seen for a long-time. It was so well made that there was no gap apparent to suggest there was any means of opening it.”This gave the car an estimated 25% extra air coming in to the turbos, which added an 50 BHP. In the group A period the cars were restricted to 300bhp but most teams ran more power. The FIA quickly moved to ban TTE. Toyota lawyered up, but they were eventually banned for the rest of the 1995 and 1996 season.

Just because a guy has a lifetime of knowledge of how to make a car fast doesn't make it cheating. That's the point of racing build the baddest machine you can , use the tricks you have learned. That's what's wrong with racing these days , everything has to be exactly the same , what's the point of that. Don't penalized me because joe blow doesn't know jack shit , that's his problem.

Oh, no! Let's not talk about the simple mod of subtly relocating the mounting point of the upper control-arm on the front suspension slightly, giving it improved geometry that helped the car handle better. No, let's talk about weight-saving tricks that were supposedly employed... because most people are too stupid to comprehend what small changes in geometry can do to help improve handling. And we Americans weren't supposed to be that smart about suspension and handling back then!��

Ugh.. Many instances of many manufacturers doing this. Story is some mopars you could not even sit a helmet on top of the car because it would bend it. Swiss cheese pontiacs in drag racing. Altered wheel bases in dodges. If you really think they allowed a light car to run all year you must be on crack. It allowed the teams to put weight where it helped. 100 pounds off the top put elsewhere to balance the car had major payoffs.

Back in those days, if you weren't cheating, you weren't winning very many races, if any. Besides, it was this "cheating" that brought all innovation not only to auto racing, but to factory cars as well. For example, the late great Smokey Yunick, owned at least 9 patents, and was directly responsible for a multitude of MANY innovations for SEVERAL US auto

makers that are still incorporated in most of the cars sold in America today, that involved safety and performance. But of course Smokey never got the "public" credit for it, as he was working under contract for all of the manufacturers at one time or another, so the auto makers themselves claimed the credit. Smokey Yunick was a man ahead of his time. He almost

single-handedly FORCED NASCAR to make rules. They eventually wrote so many rules in fact, that Smokey threw in the towel & retired from building race cars for NASCAR. But he continued to innovate, as I mentioned above.

How about the fuel tank filler neck that would hold 1 1/2 gallon more of fuel? Ingenious and cheating. Now this one I think is not cheating: They designed a master cylinder lid to use engine vacuum to pull the brake caliper pistons back to make quick work of changing brake pads during pit stops with tire changes. Ingenious, yes. Cheating, no. And so it went.

Smokey Yunick said it best and I use this all the time. "The rules tell you what you can't do, everything else you can do." When people find things to make a car function better and not break the rules, those people are called innovators. Smokey certianly was, without question, an innovator. Engines that turned the opposite direction to use engine torque to help


plant the left side of the car, 100 feet of 1/2" fuel line to increase available fuel in the car (bigger tank), several tricks with springs to help hold the track. The Chevelle that didn't fit the Nascar template, but neither did the ones in the spectator parking lot. The guy had a knack for finding a solution to the rule problem in some very undetectable ways.

No two ways about it; Penske was cheating, before and after caught at it. Not the first team/persons/manufacturer to do it and not the last. Cheating is for people who can't compete otherwise. Yunick tried it with his 7/8 scale Chevelle, but it didn't help him win and he still got caught. On the other hand, "Ohio" George Montgomery never got caught purposefully

breaking any rules, but he was blamed by many for "killing gasser racing" because no one else was either willing or able to do the kind of hard, innovative and brilliant work he did. NHRA regulated him out of the gasser class. Which certainly didn't save that class, BTW. Rule bending is something else again. It is working technically within the rules to get around

the physical limit(s) imposed by the rule. That takes really hard work or genius, or both. If you succeed, and your techinique discovered, there will likely be a rule made to block or standardize your technique. Part of racing, and, to anyone in this graceless age who still believes morality has merit, a morally sound way to compete. "Ohio" George and many, many

others have worked at it, some being successful, some not. Cheating is immoral, amoral or morally indefensible...take your pick. Mark Donahue's book, "The Unfair Advantage" showed how working within the rules, IIRC, a team could make itself dominant. If you have a sound vehicle, outstanding skills, or just a combo you thought about that is not in the

rules or not specifically disallowed in them, and a serious work ethic, why would you need to cheat? If you're lacking one of those ingredients, change things or lose. It's very telling that lots of people who would hate their spouse cheating on them, a person selling them a car or a house cheating them, or a sharp cheating them at cards say "if you ain't cheating,

you're losing" about racing. Or, "ingenious"? Penske and company did not invent acid-dipping to lighten a vehicle. What would have been ingenius? Acid-dip the body, then put weight in the car, to bring it back up to the legal minimum, but now the weight is where you want the weight. Like a 911 with weights in the front bumper. Then you are within the rule, but still

perhaps more competitive than you were before. Somebody who beats me because they have a superior car/combo, is more brilliant than I (lots of people in that group, I'm sure), worked harder than I, or figured a way to make a rule work FOR them has my respect and admiration. Somebody who cheats to beat me, and I know about it, has me after them.