“Wherever I can slide sideways”. That is Ari Vatanen’s answer when asked what his favourite rally is. “Driving on rails is very monotonous, you have to go sideways”.

The Finnish rally driver did, after all, spend a majority of his professional career sideways in either a Ford Escort RS1800 and Peugeot 205 Turbo 16. After winning the 1981 Championship, he went on to take home several victories during the Group B years. Few drivers can claim to have mastered the golden days of rallying as Vatanen did with his nimble Peugeot.

“People are so nostalgic about Group B,” he says. Even after all these years he says he is still recognised on the street in France every day.

The turbo-charged, four-wheel-drive era took rallying to its absolute limit, producing some of the fastest and most powerful cars in the motorsport. Vatanen looks back on those years with fondness.

“People talk about Group B, then you realise Man needs some unreasonable things in life, something which makes us forget the ordinary, grey, everyday life. Man needs circus. We need circus in life, we cannot just do work. Man needs dreams and Group B did that.”

The Finn was so passionate with his words that I wondered whether he had driven to the interview in his T16.