Grand Prix Insider

Since the introduction of Group 5 cars in 1977 the German tin top series Deutsche Rennsport Meisterschaft boomed, the series even got more Gr.5 entries than the World Championship of Makes they were intended for. These fast and spectacular turbocharged cars with wide fenders and wings quickly attracted a huge fan base and the 1978 season promised even more action.

As you might have already learned from last years’s posts, there were two divisions at the time: Division 1 – engines with more than 2000cc – in which the Porsche 935 dominated. Those awesome 911-based Gr. 5 cars were capable to outpower Formula 1 cars on long straight, like it happened during a test day in Paul Ricard down the long Mistral straight.

But in Division 2 – engines with up to 2000cc – fans would be looking forward to the classic fight between Ford and BMW’s head of motor sport Jochen Nerpasch withdrew his works team after complaints by teams, customers to the BMW Motorsport GmbH, unhappy to buy material in order to compete against a works outfit with almost infinite budget. As Nerpasch wanted to push Eddie Cheever, Marc Surer and Manfed Winkelhock career’s towards Formula 1 anyway, after just one season the BMW Junior Team became history in the DRM. While Cheever and Surer would concentrate on racing in the European Formula 2 Championship, Winkelhock would make sporadic appearances for privateer Team HAT.

Another interesting issue was the 1.4 supercharged BMW engine the Schnitzer brothers introduced the previous season, still installed in an ageing BMW 2002 shell and proving nonetheless superior to the normally aspirated 2.0 version BMW Motorsport GmbH sold to their clients. It became obvious that in order to beat the opposition from Ford with their – so far – normally aspirated BDA engines, the 1.4 turbo would be superior on most tracks. In order to prove that BMW-words driver Winkelhock was at the wheel of one of three 320i turbo at the first race of the season.

The opening round of the 1978 season happened at the Belgian track of Zolder, just across the border from Germany, hence the Germanic name of the event which was known as the “Bergischer Löwe”. The Division 1 race was again almost a Porsche Cup race – bar Rolf Stommelen’s Toyota – with Dutchman Toine Hezemans taking the first win of the season. In Division 2 the era of the small displacement turbo engines had begun, Hans Heyer came second with his Zakspeed Ford Escort and Harald Grohs was third but both drivers in their 2-liter-engines had little to offer against the power the turbo developed down the straights. That would be the deciding issue throughout the season.

The second round seemed to confirm the trend, this time Austrian Harald Ertl won the Division 2 race at the wheel of a Schnitzer-BMW 320i 1.4 turbo ahead of normally aspirated fraction of Zakspeed-Escorts and Markus Höttinger’s BMW at the old and lengthy Nürburgring Nordschleife. But BMW’s Motorsport GmbH wasn’t completely dormant regarding their Group 5 activities. The Bavarian manufacturer’s racing arm entered Ronnie Peterson and a special 320i in Division 1 to test a newly developed 2-liter-turbo-engine.

This would have been a test as the car was then shipped to the US to compete in the IMSA Series, as BMW had no plans to race it in the DRM against the mighty Porsche. But Peterson didn’t make the race – won by Bob Wollek – as the Swede crashed the works-car in practice and a decent repair turned out to be impossible on site.