David Soares ponders the letter "P" and The Shipping News I had the good fortune this past weekend to be among the crowd who got to watch the second proper four-hour endurance race to be held at Laguna Seca Raceway. The race itself held plenty of excitement and drama from beginning to end, but the biggest drama was the racing debut of Porsche’s new LMP2 car, the RS Spyder run by Penske Motorsport. But for a position-losing splash-and-go at the end the car’s debut was a flawless fifth overall and first in the LMP2 class. The Numbers Game Much has been made about the virtual strip-mining of nostalgia by Porsche AG and its wholly-owned subsidiaries Porsche Cars North America and Porsche Motorsport North America in bringing forth the RS Spyder LMP2 car. Introduced in the mid-1950's, the original 550 RS Spyders were the first pure racing mid- engine sportscars built by Porsche. The 550, 550A, RSK and RS 60/61 Spyders were the most popular and successful Porsche racers of that era and contributed to Porsche’s “giant killer” reputation of that period. James Dean’s too fast to live, too young to die moment was in a Porsche Spyder and guys like Ken Miles, Jack McAfee, and Ritchie Ginther made their names in the cars of John Edgar and John von Neumann. While the RS Spyders were renowned as “giant killers,” the Penske connection was to a horse of another color – from silver to the dominant blue and yellow 917/30 Can Am car developed with Porsche by Mark Donohue and Roger Penske. The car known as the “Penske turbo-Panzer” remains one of the wildest and most powerful sportscars ever produced. Penske and Donohue’s 1972 917/10 cowed Team McLaren into abandoning a Canadian American Challenge Cup series that they had dominated for five years running. By the end of the 1973 season the 917/30 was virtually unbeatable and became a legend among American racing fans and throughout the world. The players tried to take the field… I was at the Laguna Seca Can Am’s in ’72 and ’73 and I can remember Penske being a very hands-on team boss in those days, not someone who flew in on the corporate jet for a race-day press conference while what seemed like 50 guys from Weissach looked over his crew’s shoulders. For sure by ’73 the Penske show was the class of the paddock with an enclosed transporter and cleaned- and-pressed crew shirts, but the transporter was a two-axel bobtail and the crew might have numbered a dozen if you counted the Captain and Mark Donohue. When the turbo-panzer blew up in the heat race, Penske and Donohue rolled up their sleeves and knelt on the asphalt while the crew managed an 8-hour engine change before the main so that Donohue could put on a show carving up the entire field to win convincingly. Before this screed turns into a big sloppy hog wallow of nostalgia, let’s look at Porsche’s sportscar racing heritage. There were front-line Porsche entries in the 24 Hours of Le Mans for thirty-five years until their last win in 1998 with the GT1- 98. Sixteen Le Mans wins. Then nothing. After Norbert Singer's stillborn LMP900 car, the core of the racing department at Weissach was shifted about and the smoke-screen about needing engineering resources for the new truck was laid on. Now Weissach has finally crawled out from under their joint-venture truck program with VAG and after seven years can build a proper prototype. Hartmut Kristen, who stage managed the project, admitted that the engineers on the LMP2 program were about 60% Carrera GT personnel and 40% new hires brought in to revive the racing department. The choice of the LMP2 class remains a nod to the Prodigal Nephew who apparently must not be challenged head to head. Seven years is an eternity in racing, but why bring in the Terex Titan-load of nostalgia double-whammy? I know that this is supposed to be the point where worldly cynicism takes over and we all start the lamentation about the Way It Used to Be and how dare these Johann-come-Latelys desecrate the tomb of our memories. I hate to burst everybody’s bubble, but now that I’ve heard the pitch and seen the results, from my Mr. Just a Fan, Man perspective that big tipper full of RS Spyder/Penske turbo- panzer nostalgia is brilliant marketing and a shrewd business strategy by Porsche and the best thing that could have happened to sportscar racing. I love it. The marching band refused to yield… First of all, drippy nostalgia or not, the Porsche RS Spyder LMP2 is the real deal. Like everything built to the current rules package there’s a certain goofiness to the proportions, but park it next to a Courage C-65 or a Lola B05/40 and the Porsche turns graceful. Once it took to the track Lucas Luhr managed the third fastest race lap of 1:17.136 behind Hayanari Shimoda’s blistering 1.16.480 in the LMP1 Zytek and JJ Lehto’s Audi R8 1:16.643. Remarkably, this race time was faster than Biela and Pirro’s championship-winning R8 and both Dyson Lolas which had all out-qualified the Porsche. The ripping snarl of the atmo V-8 was pure race car as opposed to the whisper of the turbos. Porsche, like Ferrari, has always traded on race-breeding. Model names like Carrera and Targa refer to classic open-road races of the Fifties. Race-breeding in the higher reaches of the market can’t be based on hype. Porsche financial reports blame recent sales stagnation on the global economy, but recent news reports suggest that the real estate boom and low interest rates have trebled disposable income in the United States to nearly six hundred billion dollars a year. The recent Monterey auctions reported record sales of collector cars, the high point (or low point depending on your perspective on the current frenzy) a ’66 VW Westfalia camper going for near a cool hundred grand. I tend to believe that it’s got to be hard to shift sports cars without the sport image. Porsche also engages in what a recording hardware sales whiz once defined for me as “selling the dream.” Just like high-end recording studios are found in more spare bedrooms than you’d imagine, Porsche sells surprising numbers of brand new racing cars to the American market. While German annual reports don’t break out sales of wholly-owned subsidiaries like Porsche Motorsport North America, it’s clear that there’s a substantial business case for servicing all those GT3 Cups and RS’s floating around the paddocks of the Speed World Challenge, Grand Am, Grand Am Cup, IMSA Porsche Cup, and various club series. It was reported that the IMSA Cup will see fields of 45 cars next year. Again, if you’re selling the dream, you’d better keep the target up there or the forty- and fifty- somethings with fat lines of credit and real estate equity numbers rivaling those J.P. Morgan at the turn of the century are going to find some other way to live out their fantasies. If those forty- and fifty-something Americans are the target-market for Porsche’s offerings for both road and track, why not directly appeal to their dreams? A recent Porsche ad campaign featured a 911 in front of a swing set over the tag line “Sold in 1974.” Who sold that car in 1974? Roger Penske and Mark Donohue. Do you recall what was revealed…. It was clear from the statements of Hartmut Kristen and Roger Penske at their Saturday press conference that the RS Spyder was developed exclusively by Porsche. Penske wasn’t brought in to develop the car. He was brought in to sell the dream. I tried to draw Penske during the Q & A about his history with sportscar racing. “Well, as I think I’ve said earlier this is a kind of coming home, especially at Laguna Seca, because of some of the great racing I did, certainly early on in my career, was at Riverside and certainly the race here at Laguna." But the Captain made clear that it is his business partnership with Porsche as a major dealer in the United States, England, and Scotland that is driving the deal. As he thought through his answer Penske saw a synergy between the open- wheel racing he has mainly been involved in for the past 30 years and sportscar endurance racing: “We like long races, you think in long distance races, that’s why we’ve won Indianapolis thirteen times because it wasn’t that we were the fastest car but I think that the consistency, that’s really what this formula brings to our team.” And that’s the irony: even if Roger Penske was brought in as a marketing hook to flog “Sold in 1974” tin, the whole thing is going to work. The LMP2 RS Spyder is for real, and the dream itself is for real. Roger Penske likely didn’t plan to return to sportscar racing, but his organization is a good fit and with the IRL struggling and NASCAR threatening to limit the entries of mega-teams he’s got a surfeit of personnel who know how to go the distance. For many of us, sportscar racing is about nostalgia and traditions. There is supposed to be a sportscar race on the Monterey peninsula in October, and Roger Penske is supposed to run a Porsche there because those were the great races. Tom Chilton conjures memories of a young James Hunt. Big-block Corvettes are supposed to pound the ground and Astons are fast but never quite there. Porsches are supposed to be a little smaller but a little stronger and win at the long ones like Le Mans and Sebring. Little Nemo in Slumberland But sportscar racing is also about diversity and endurance. It’s about the involvement of the great automobile manufacturers of the world. Most people are tired of spec racing, but you can still win on Sunday and sell on Monday. We’re not the only ones being sold a dream. Porsche and the ALMS may have struck the cord that will resonate with people, sportscar endurance racing could be on that threshold of a dream renewed. |
David Soares |
