three were killed. All the top teams immediately pulled out of the rally and Group B was placed in jeopardy. Disaster struck again in early May at the Tour de Corse. Lancia's Toivonen was the championship favorite, and once the rally got underway he was the pace setter. Seven kilometres into the 18th stage, Toivonen's S4 flew off the unguarded edge of a tightening left hand bend and plunged down a steep wooded hillside. The car landed inverted with the fuel tanks ruptured by the impact. The combination of red hot turbocharger, Kevlar bodywork, and ruptured fuel tank ignited the car and set fire to the dry undergrowth. Toivonen and co-driver Sergio Cresto died in their seats. With no witnesses to the accident it was impossible to determine what caused the crash other than Toivonen had left the road at high speed. Some cite Toivonen's ill health at the time (he reportedly was suffering from flu); others suggest mechanical failure, or simply the difficulty of driving the car, although Toivonen, like Vatanen, had a career full of crashing out while leading rallies. Up until that stage he was leading the rally by a large margin, with no other driver challenging him. The crash came a year after Lancia driver Attilio Bettega had crashed and died in his 037. While that fatality was largely blamed on the unforgiving Corsican scenery (and bad luck, as his co-driver, Maurizio Perissinot, was unharmed), Toivonen and Cresto's deaths, combined with the Portugal tragedy and televised accident of F1 driver Marc Surer in another RS200 which killed co-driver Michel Wyder, compelled the FIA to ban all Group B cars immediately for 1987. Audi decided to quit Group B entirely after the Corsica rally. The final days of Group B were also controversial. The Peugeots were disqualified from the Rally Sanremo by the Italian scrutineers as the 'skirts' around the bottom of the car were found to be illegal. Peugeot immediately accused the Italians of favouring Lancia. Their case was strengthened at the next event, the RAC Rally, when the British scrutineers passed the Peugeots as legal in identical trim. FISA annulled the result of the Sanremo Rally eleven days after the final round in the United States. As a result, the championship title was passed from Lancia's Markku Alén to Peugeot's Juha Kankkunen. Timo Salonen had won another two rallies during the 1986 season and became