Forget Ferrari. Race For Glory: Audi vs. Lancia Is the Racing Movie You Should Watch

I went into the holidays looking forward to relaxing, spending time with family, and taking the edge off with a racing movie. You know the one. Spoiler alert: Michael Mann’s Ferrari isn’t a motorsport film. It’s mostly a film about Enzo Ferrari’s extramarital affairs, which, while scandalous, didn’t quite hit the mark for me. The most exciting part of it is when Enzo’s wife, masterfully played by Penelope Cruz, tries to shoot him in their office. That happens within the first five minutes, and Cruz’s standout performance can’t keep the rest of the disjointed film afloat.

Thankfully, there’s a better racing film out right now—one that follows a team’s arc over a historic season, in a uniquely grueling form of motorsport that doesn’t get a lot of love or coverage in the U.S. I’m talking, of course, about Race For Glory: Audi vs. Lancia. Directed by Stefano Mordini and starring Riccardo Scamarcio and Daniel Brühl as dueling team managers Cesare Fiorio and Roland Gumpert. The movie takes a close look at the 1983 World Rally Championship, the second season of the formidable Group B era.

https://youtu.be/EDjImq6gI1A?feature=shared

Fiorio is the star of the show, and Race for Glory follows his arc as Lancia’s team manager as he contends with tight budgets, a fragile, technically inferior car in the rear-wheel drive Lancia 037, and a star driver in Walter Röhrl who is openly disinterested in victory. Despite these challenges, Fiorio is singularly focused on winning the championship, as Lancia’s management is considering pulling out of rallying after the ‘83 season. (Second spoiler alert: That didn't happen.)

Rally is a bizarre, complex form of motorsport with all sorts of arcane rules. While far from perfect—some subplots never quite connect, there are a few confusing moments, and the pace can be … relaxed—Race For Glory captures the competition in a way that tickles the nerdiest among us without alienating more casual viewers. For example, it dedicates a scene to the Lancia 037’s homologation inspection, in which the company pretends it had built 200 roadgoing examples of the lightweight rally car when there were really just 103. Fiorio wines and dines the inspectors while car carriers whiz by in the background, and a standard, rule-book procedure becomes one of the film’s most memorable moments.