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1992 World Sportscar Championship


The 1992 Sportscar World Championship season was the 40th and final season of FIA World Sportscar Championship motor racing. It featured the 1992 FIA Sportscar World Championship, which was contested over a six race series which ran from 26 April to 18 October 1992. The championship was open to Group C Sportscars.

The Drivers Championship was won jointly by Yannick Dalmas and Derek Warwick and the Teams Championship by Peugeot Talbot Sport. The FIA Cup for Drivers was awarded to Ferdinand de Lesseps and the FIA Cup for Teams to Chamberlain Engineering.

From the start, the 1992 season was in doubt. The FIA planned to cancel the season due to a lack of entrants, but pressure from Peugeot, who had poured a large sum of money into the sport and did not wish to see that money wasted after only a year of competition, convinced the FIA that there would be enough entries to make the season worthwhile. With this, the FIA allowed the season to move forward.

The FIA's vision of a single unified formula for the Sportscar World Championship that would truly equal that of Formula One was finally into place following the development of 3500 cc sportscars in the previous seasons. This formula of engine equalisation took over the series, eliminating any previous engine that did not fit into the 3.5 L category. Thus every car had similar engines, and new subclasses were born: C1 for works supported teams with engines of 10 or 12 cylinders and usually backed by factory teams, and FIA Cup for privateer teams, usually running the Ford Cosworth DFR V8.

With the elimination of the previous C2 class, it required manufacturers such as Mazda and Porsche to build entirely new engines, and due to the large change in engine dimensions compared to what they had used in 1991, all new chassis as well. Porsche already had an F1 engine in their 3512 unit used by Footwork, but the engine design was found to be lacking. Porsche, suffering financially at the time, decided that it was no longer worth not only improving the 3512, but also replacing the 962 chassis, and decided not to return.


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