Tour de Corse

By 1985, drivers were openly worried.

At the 1985 Tour de Corse, Italian driver Attilo Bottega was killed when his Lancia 037 left the road and struck a tree.

His co-driver somehow survived.

Later that year, Ari Vatanen suffered a severe crash in Argentina while driving a Peugeot 205 T16.

But it was that accident that really kick-started it.

Yeah, and look, that came after, obviously, Henry Toivonen and Sergio Cresto were killed at the Tour de Course rally in Alancea.

And look, there were some issues with the Group B cars and things like having the fuel tank situated sort of under the seats of the rally cars and stuff like that, which was obviously... all for weight saving at the time and weight distribution.

But it certainly wasn't a safe measure and certainly something you wouldn't see these days.