The championship was marred with protests again, like so often before. But the little Autobianchi of Röhrig was declared legal in the end, so we had another champion from a small class, the Group 1B under 1000 cc this time. A worthy champion, with 8 wins out of 8 in a class which had enough competitors - though he had only a single real challenger in Detlev Ringhof.
Over 350 drivers got championship points, and the most hotly contested class was for 2000 cc Group 1B: Brombach, Selzer, Kimmerle or Dransmann had close fights. The over 2000 cc class was a close fight too with Schumacher and Döring, both Eichberg Capris; Schumacher finally fled into the Group 2 class. The 2000 cc Group 2 class was fine as well, with Robert Zakowski in one of his father's Escort RS fighting it out with Herbert Hartge and his BMW 320. This ended in a protest as well. 1600 cc Group 1B wasn't very exciting (perhaps due to the ONS VW Golf Pokal, which used Group 1B cars as well), in Group 2 the Kilian Audi 80 of Wolf was dominating - but Bergmeister's win in Zandvoort in a works supported car was poor planning in the VW-Audi group. Another dominating driver was good old Manfred mohr in his Alfasud Sprint. If he hadn't reitired in the first race at Zolder, he would have become champion. In the 1150 classes Fiestas were hot, but Reisenbichler's cat was too hot: it was disqualified, while the fast HWRT car of Kern was legal indeed.
Halfway through the championship, it was clear that the champion would come from either the 1000 cc Datsun of Behrens (the 1979 champion) or the Group 1B car of Röhrig. The latter's class comrades seemed to take it easy to enable an Autobianchi finnaly a championship, but Behrens got competition halfway from a Veytal-Polo with Günther Ressel. In Hockenheim, the fight ended with a bang and a spin for Ressel, but at Siegerland Behrens was beaten, just like the last race in Zolder: he was challenged by Angsten in a Group 2 Autobianchi, a bang, and Behrens finished third, behind Ressel.
The races: |
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