Flat Out In a Le Mans Winning Porsche 962 - /CHRIS HARRIS ON CARS

CHRIS HARRIS: Come to Weissach, to the Porsche Museum, and drive our Le Mans-

winning

962. Are you serious? I said. The 1987 car? Rothman's livery? The machine I thought I'd never see in the raw, let alone sit in it, let alone drive it on the track it was developed on? That's right, they said. And you'll get to meet the legend that is Norbert Singer, the man who designed the car, the man involved in every Porsche Le Mans victory since the 917. I'm there, I said. Why is the 962 so special? Why were this series of

cars

, 956 and 962, so dominant? And why even now do I look at this car in Roth

mans

colors and think it's the coolest car ever?

NORBERT SINGER: I think this was... in that area, it was the first car with real ground effects. Of course, other

cars

also had some ground effects, but they weren't really made to do faster lap times. And we were, let's say, lucky or found the right key to take a pretty big step. And in comparison, when we talk about downforce, the amount of downforce, our target was the 917/30, the Can-Am car, which didn't care about drag. It would just get downforce, because it had 1,000 horsepower. There was enough power there. And so we knew how much downforce we had.

When we saw that we could even double that downforce or make it 2 and a half times more, then we knew that this is the right path, with a reasonable track, of course. CHRIS HARRIS: Yes. And this was his discovery of ground effect technology. Obviously, you were doing things that not even Formula One was doing, because they didn't have that much body to work with, right? NORBERT SINGER: Yes, Formula One had ground effects two or three years before. CHRIS HARRIS: With the skirts? NORBERT SINGER: With the skirts, yes. And that's where we start. Because we saw that in Formula One it is working perfectly.

Lap times were much faster. So we started as Formula One. We copied a kind of Formula One with a wider cabin, because there was a two-seater car. And it turned out that it doesn't work at all. There was no way. And even when we put on skirts (which regulation doesn't allow) just to learn the effects of the ground, it doesn't work. With skirts it was even worse. And then we realized that we needed the air to pass through the sides through the tunnels, which is the most important thing for the sports car. And then we modified that area to help improve downforce.

And this was the key to everything. CHRIS HARRIS: Ground effect provided this incredible performance, but if the car was known for its speed, it was also known for its durability and reliability. And there were so many stories of customers who came to buy the cars, bought the car, signed the documents, gave the key, turned the key, started the car and just left. Is it really the truth? NORBERT SINGER: Yes, yes. Because, well, reliability was always a big story at Porsche, because Porsche was always thinking about every race car or almost every race car, thinking about Le Mans.

And Le Mans doesn't just mean top speed. It also means durability. You had to run the first 24 hours. And then you can see where you are. Maybe you'll win. And durability was a big thing. And that was, let's say, the Porsche education. Everyone thought, whatever you do, does it last 24 hours? And this happened not only in the 956, but also in all previous models. CHRIS HARRIS: What was the most difficult component to do in the last 24 hours? NORBERT SINGER: It's the gearbox. CHRIS HARRIS: Yes? And the synchronized one. NORBERT SINGER: Right. Of course, we had a lot of experience in that.

So the problem was not with this car, the 956, but with the previous cars. CHRIS HARRIS: 926. NORBERT SINGER: Yes, we had problems with the gearboxes. Because at Le Mans, with the long straight, there were no chicanes, you race for a minute, or even more, with the accelerator full and one gear, in the highest gear. And this very often harms the top gear. First, the engine, but when the engine was reliable, next were the gears. CHRIS HARRIS: And did you find it a challenge every time you went to Le Mans? NORBERT SINGER: Yes, Le Mans was always a challenge, at any time.

Even if you have a reliable car, let's say, you are never 100% sure that some details can go wrong. That they came out two or three times you were right, but the third or fourth time they can fail. CHRIS HARRIS: Oh, yeah. This is the Porsche 962, which won Le Mans in 1987. It was driven by Al Holbert, HJ Stuck and Derek Bell. I'm in Weissach, Porsche's test track in the Swabian hills. I don't really know how to describe what this is... yes, in comparative terms. Let me try that for a second while we turn this key. This red Porsche key comes especially from a series production car of that era.

Because it is a car that won Le Mans and that starts with a key. CHRIS HARRIS: It sounds a little like a motorcycle at low speed. Well, let me try to think of clever things to compare this experience to. Let's drive it. The accelerator pedal is heavy, the clutch is heavy. First there is a door leaf towards you. This is the Le Mans era, the Le Mans march. CHRIS HARRIS: The car wants to change direction, it doesn't have as much aerodynamics. We'll leave it in third here. It also happens that... CHRIS HARRIS: --when that turbo engine works well.

CHRIS HARRIS: There you go. Ho Ho Ho! God knows how fast it goes. It is really powerful, let's say from the aerodynamic aspect. Then second gear to this right curve. I'm going to try to change the throttle a little. The gear is long. This thing will run at 240 miles per hour. CHRIS HARRIS: This righty has the speed and it looks like I'm going to pass. It's pretty bumpy there. Torque is what you think. The engine is simply fantastic. And the noises. 850 kilograms. 850 kilograms, about 650 horsepower. CHRIS HARRIS: And of course, it was really about going fast in a straight line.

Make it turn corners, fast, in a straight line. But it really has a lovely direction. It's pretty neutral. And then it just goes straight. The torque from the engine is excellent, and then you get this punch at the top end. Yes, it's moving here. And it's also physical. CHRIS HARRIS: It's hard to know where to start with how special this car is. The body is still battered from the race and the interior is beautifully distressed. It has more power than a Noble M600 and yet weighs 400 kilograms less. The acceleration is relentless. Driving it is the best thing I've done in years.

And driving the car today, first of all, I am speechless at how fast it is. How easy the car is to drive in real terms. One observation, the car has a spool differential, but it doesn't really understeer at low speed. How do you do that? Because I should just push. Particularly with the turbo engine it should just, tuh-tuh-tuh. But it's not like that. NORBERT SINGER: Well, there is a long way to go to find the settings that eliminate these understeers. There is still some understeer. In fact, it depends on the tires you are using. But it's... and we made various types of comparisons with a differential, a locking differential.

And it always turned out that this is the fastest way, to do it with the reel of that car with these tires at that time. Today, I think, a reel is... you can do it with a differential because now you've learned a lot with differentials, with these different things. And now a differential is essential. But in those days, only the reel was the best. CHRIS HARRIS: In the long tail car, the 1987 car, obviously ground effect, long tail for Le Mans, but a big stretcher in the back, a really big stretcher. Why was this? For stability or because that' NORBERT SINGER: It's for stability and help to the front axle.

CHRIS HARRIS: Does it help the front axle? How did you solve that? NORBERT SINGER: No, this is funny, because when you work... when ground effects really work, when you do something in the back, very often you have a response from the front, a bigger response from the front. And then you know your ground effects are working. Because they are on the ground. You influence them and vice versa. If you do something on the floor, it influences your back. So this is something amazing. CHRIS HARRIS: But clearly your knowledge of the way air flowing over something produces that behavior is extraordinary.

Because you went ahead and just... this was all experimentation, right? NORBERT SINGER: Yeah. CHRIS HARRIS: And you think motorsports now is... you can't make that big game now, right? Everything is incremental. NORBERT SINGER: Right. CHRIS HARRIS: Does that excite you any less? NORBERT SINGER: We were at the beginning. There you could take great steps. Now the big steps are done and you need to find all the bits and pieces together. In the end, it's a similarly big step. CHRIS HARRIS: Is there another museum that lets you go 150 miles per hour lap after lap of its multimillion-dollar exhibits?

And is there a cooler man than Norbert Singer? The man who created this dominant machine and yet is now retired and teaching at a university because he wants to share his knowledge with the next generation. What car, what type.