A new movie retelling the intense struggle for the 1983 FIA World Rallying Championship is slated to be released on January 5, 2024. The first trailer for “Race for Glory: Audi vs. Lancia” vividly illustrates how the production brought the Group B era back to life.
The mid-1980s is now considered a golden era of rallying, but the drivers feared the new monsters they were tasked with driving in competition.
“Race for Glory” stars Riccardo Scamarcio playing Cesare Fiorio, the team manager of the Lancia factory team. The movie focuses on Lancia as it fields the new Rally 037 in the hopes of winning the championship. The trailer depicts the new rally machine debuting in 1983 despite its actual launch being a technical failure-filled season in 1982. It’s an error that I can overlook for a more concise and compelling story.
Opposite Scamarcio is Daniel Brühl as Roland Gumpert, the Audi Sport team boss. This isn’t Brühl’s first time in a historic motorsport film, as he famously portrayed F1 champion Niki Lauda in “Rush.” “Race for Glory” attempts to portray Gumpert as the main antagonist, with Brühl being the intimidating face of the formidable program. The Audi Sport Quattro won the manufacturers’ championship in 1982, primarily due to introducing four-wheel-drive to rallying.
While management took center stage in the trailer, Volker Bruch appears as Walter Röhrl. A brief clip is shown in the trailer where Fiorio convinces Röhrl, the 1982 drivers’ champion with Opel, to join Lancia. He famously held off Audi’s Michèle Mouton to win the title in a slightly-dated Group 4 Ascona.
While not seen in the trailer, French actress Esther Garrel will be portraying Mouton and Italian actor Gianmaria Martini will play her Audi teammate Hannu Mikkola. I hope that drivers Röhrl, Mouton, and Mikkola do get a significant amount of screen time and the focus isn’t solely on the two team bosses. A movie set during the WRC’s most dangerous and thrilling era should explore what it was like to get behind the wheel.