"Sports Cars" (1970 To 1971)
For the 1970 season, the FIA applied the Group 5 classification to the Sports Car class which had previously been known as Group 4 Sports Cars. The minimum production requirement remained at 25 and the engine capacity maximum at 5 litres as had applied in the superseded Group 4. Group 5 Sports Cars contested the FIA's International Championship for Makes in 1970 & 1971, alongside the 3 litre Group 6 Prototype Sports Cars.
During 1970 the FIA decided to replace the existing Group 5 Sports Car category when the rules expired at the end of the 1971 season, so the big 917s and 512s would have to be retired at the end of that year. Surprisingly, Ferrari decided to give up any official effort with the 512 in order to prepare for the new 1972 season regulations. But many 512s were still raced by private teams, most of them converted to M specification. As a result of the rule change, sports car racing popularity suffered and did not recover until the following decade, with the advent of Group C which incidentally were forced out of competition in favour of the 3.5 atmo engine formula, reminiscent of events nineteen years previous.
Read more about this topic: Group 5 (racing), 2nd Generation Group 5
Famous quotes containing the words sports and/or cars:
“Short of a wholesale reform of college athletics—a complete breakdown of the whole system that is now focused on money and power—the women’s programs are just as doomed as the men’s are to move further and further away from the academic mission of their colleges.... We have to decide if that’s the kind of success for women’s sports that we want.”
—Christine H. B. Grant, U.S. university athletic director. As quoted in the Chronicle of Higher Education, p. A42 (May 12, 1993)
“When, at rare intervals, some thought visits one, as perchance he is walking on a railroad, then, indeed, the cars go by without his hearing them. But soon, by some inexorable law, our life goes by and the cars return.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)