THE FACT
CASTROCARO TERME 25th July 1982 - 12th RALLY COLLINE DI ROMAGNA
The 7th race of the 1982 Italian Rally Championship starts, as the precedent ones, with the best intentions. The crews accredited to the final victory are many and all of them with the intention to do their best in a competition perfectly organized and to contend the final victory up to the last meter of the special stage nr. 26. Among them TONINO TOGNANA with the Ferrari 308 GTBs, Italian Champion at the end of the season, FABRIZIO TABATON, then winner with his LANCIA STRATOS and MIKY BIASION, always spectacular with the ASCONA 400. Amd among them also the outsiders ADARTICO VUDAFIERI and FULVIO BACCHELLI with the new LANCIA RALLY 037, a car built on purpose for the rallies, very powerful and maybe too light. The first special stage, the URBIANO, begins immediately with a sensation. The car nr. 9, the one with the crew Bacchelli-Spollon, in a very fast point goes off street somersaulting many times along the scarp slant. During the somersaults, Bacchelli hits the lever that unhooks the seat-belts and goes out of the car that, in the meanwhile, has lost the plastics hardtop. The driver from Trieste rolls for some meters while Spollon, remained fainted in the cockpit, has a cervical vertebra fracture. The stage is interrupted to bring help after that Perazio-Rossi, with the number 36, 27 minutes after the accident stop their car to ask if help is needed. In precedence Carrotta, Bentivogli, Bignardi and many other competitors had told the commissioner at the end of the stage that the appeals of Bacchelli let intend that the ambulance was necessary, but he was sceptic for the fact that other drivers didn't have noticed the same gesture. Bacchelli and Spollon, at the end of this ugly story, after a period of convalescence will return on board of their LANCIA RALLY 037, but a series of polemics and charges towards the small car will jeopardize its fame of strong and sure car.

THE CHARGE
The accident happened to Attilio Bettega in Corsica with double fracture to the legs had made to rise quite a lot of doubts on the solidity and therefore on the safety of the new LANCIA weapon. If the dynamics of this fact could be considered sporadic and therefore partly negligible, the accident repetition in such a short time, with identical consequences for crew and car, let go off a justified alarm. What mostly made to discuss were the conditions of the central body of the LANCIA 037 after the somersaults, even if happened in a grassy plan, without rocky prominences and trees. The car body had a notable lowering - in the order of 8-10 centimeters - from the driver side that, as already described, was hurled out of the car after the breakup of the safety belts blocking system. The discussion matters at the end of the analyses of the wrecks were many, all tied to an only concept: the ABARTH was responsible of what happened, because guilty to obviate to the 037 power lack drastically reducing the weight and therefore the solidity of the main structures of the car. This thanks above all to the rules of the group B, too permissive and at the limits of the irregularity. Furthermore the car of Bacchelli was already the evolved model, with the water injection and with further lightening to the car-body, as the doors in Kevlar in substitution of the metallic ones, considered too heavy. The LANCIA RALLY 037, in substance, was more similar to a group C car, more proper for the race-track speed competitions that to the rallies, where the tortuous races and the gravel could expose in each time to serious risk the safety of the crew.

THE DEFENCE
To defend the scorpion car was the father of the SE037 project: the engineer Sergio Limone. He sustained, after having examined the wrecks of the Bacchelli 037, to have noticed a bending in the central body of about 7-8 centimeters. This was explainable with the fact that, in the somersaults, all the kinetic energy was concentrated in only one point and this strenghts concentration caused the bending of the main structure. The same thing had also happened in the precedend race, the Rally della Lana, with the 037 of Bracco. An analogous accident, even if in this case the car didn't somersault along a slant but it directly broke against a tree. Also in this case there was the yelding of the roll-bar but Limone mantained his opinion, confirming the solidity of the Turinese car, comforted by the fact that in both cases the cars had well withstood to the bumps both in the anterior side that in the rear one. The matter of the flown away plastic hardtop (as it happened then to Bettega in Corsica), sustained Limone, doesn't have nothing to do with the safety of the car. The LANCIA RALLY has inherited the car body of the Beta MONTECARLO, been born as spider car and therefore prepared to also hold up to the somersaults without the top. In practice, to conclude, it was necessary to increase the car solidity and Limone demonstrated himself favorable to the decision to protect who, inside the cockpit, risked his life during each competition.



THE SENTENCE
The 037 was fully discharged, also because the accusations were actually addressed to all the cars of group B, more similar to true prototypes than to sure cars, conceived for rally races. A lot of innovations and shrewdness were made about safety theme, in fact the 037 untill at the end of its career never had the fame of fragile car. Substantially it was endowed with a very elevated active safety system and the demonstration is the fact that the "champions" were able to bring it to the limit without almost never being taken by surprise by anomalous reactions. Besides the 037 was a true race car and the people who drove it were well aware of its both structural and technical limits and the risk to have an accident during the carrying out of a competition became a secondary factor. The episode of Bacchelli was therefore filed and almost immediately forgotten thanks to the triumphs that the 037 achieved in the following season, becoming 1983 World Rally Champion.

.:: CRASH TEST IN SPECIAL STAGE ::.

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