David Soares on Porsche, Politics, Penske, Penalties and Pon It’s the end of a perfect weekend for sportscar fans, what with Spa and Road Atlanta in the can and my Claret bottle reminding me of the other promised Big Announcement finally bearing fruit, one of the local vintners being Ben Pon of microbus fame. The microbus and that other boxer that kept sprouting cylinders. I think they got to about sixteen on the test bench, but I’ve always been partial to the twelve. I know you're used to 16 or more, sorry we only have 8… It was the twelve that came to mind when the dust finally settled from Scott Atherton’s constant coquetry of the past months and he finally was able to get down to blowing white smoke with the announcement of the arrival of the Pope of American racing in the American Le Mans Series. So many P’s, spit it out MAN: Porsche, Penske, P2. P2? This really is a ride on the wayback machine. Are we contesting the index of performance again? What about the turbo-Panzer? The Traco 512M? The Zerex Special, for God’s sake? Crushing the opposition! Why on earth isn't the biggest name in sportscar racing and the Pope of American racing going after the top rank? Vas ist das, anyway? Well, Porsche remains stuck with the issue of the Prodigal Nephew’s enmeshment with VAG and the need to field an Audi P1. The Prodigal Nephew still has great influence with the board at Porsche AG. And let’s face it, nobody’s done a proper P2 to the new rules. Conventional wisdom says that the DP motor just gets adapted to a Lola chassis and off they go. But Uncle Norbert was double dipping on his retirement this past January at Daytona and it was pretty clear that the boxer isn’t going to cut it any more. Where is that large automobile ? Looking at the recent speed of the Zytec-powered 675 cars and the P2 engine rules it doesn’t take much imagination to see that an atmo V-8 is going to be the ticket for the new Porsche. From a marketing standpoint, Zuffenhausen is back on the V-8 bandwagon with the Cayenne and a rumored V-8 911 replacement to overpower the Cayman. A peek at the rules suggests that Weissach have just such a motor in the back warehouse, the 2708 Indy motor from fifteen years ago. A P2 V-8 also happens to fit in nicely as a test-bed for an engine for another series Penske competes in that has decided to go road racing after all. Well, it all remains to be seen, but I’m still thinking that this is a Beautiful Thing. Who’s to say that Porsche can’t go back to being a “Giant Killer” with such a car? After the money is gone… Press release hype aside, Roger Penske told CBS-TV that he made this move because it made sense to him first and foremost as a business deal. Nobody knows what that business deal looks like, but we have to remember that racing is a business. In that other series with the “level playing field” it’s interesting that the bank that writes the checks sponsors the car at the top of the standings. ( The Manchurian Bank Account . km ) Meanwhile, at Road Atlanta the four at the sharp end of the field were covered by nine tenths of a second with the front row separated by half a second. At Spa it was even better with the front row separated by less than two hundredths. In that other series Big Brother designs your car and tests your engine so that you, the perennial backmarker in the Big Show, have the illusion of a level playing field. The DP players I’ve talked to also say that from a business standpoint the cost-savings are also an illusion by the time the car actually hits the track. I think that these French rules seem to be giving us some damn fine automobiles. If you're looking for trouble, well that's what you will find… The Captain has made his move back to top-rank sportscar endurance racing and it’s not with Big Brother. There are still Big Brother issues in the ALMS, for sure. Timo Bernhard’s black flag at Atlanta made a lot of people wonder, but then Robin Liddell had to take a blatant hit in the Speed World Challenge to point out what it really means to have home-team advantage. Max Papis reminded us why there aren’t any Champion Audi R6's in the SWC this year when he punted Liddell out of a well-deserved win and got a mere fine. Everybody plays Big Brother every now and then. Timo and Robin were racing nose-to-tail but you can’t overlook the fact that at the moment of their “incident” leader J.J. Lehto was trying to overtake as well. There are a number of ways to misunderstand what the other guy is doing in this situation – did Timo ram Robin or did he just decide to tuck-in for a better line just as Robin decided to brake-check him? Did Robin decide to tuck in to give the overall leader a better exit? Was he even aware of Timo on the inside with the bright lights of the Audi coming up on the outside? This is racing for God’s sake and it’s frustrating when crap driving gets rewarded but close racing gets a stop- and-go. The whole thing reminded me of the Dindo, Gounon and McNish bump and bingo incidents at Laguna Seca in 2000. Gounon took the heat but as a man with a past, regardless of how quick he can be, what else could one expect. McNish, who has been on the other end of those incidents way too much for his portfolio, let his thoughts erupt at the post race press conference. Today's drivers need to ditch the PC and speak their minds. Criminals that never broke no law… But I digress. Both Road Atlanta and Spa gave us close racing this weekend that wasn’t orchestrated by Safety Cars or spec rules. There were lots of different approaches to getting to the front and they resulted in close racing almost to the very end when attrition and weather sorted out the final results. At both races a new-look P2 almost cracked the podium too, with the Field’s Lola B05/40 AER in fourth at Atlanta and Chamberlain’s in fifth at Spa. I don’t think that the AER motor is the optimum powerplant for the class and it’ll be interesting to see what Penske and Weissach can do if they’re serious about this thing. |
David Soares |
