Creators Podcast
Episode #14
12.30.24
Full Podcast Episode Transcript –
The Legacy of the Porsche 917
The Engineering Journey: Iteration and Improvement
Ferdinand Piëch: The Driving Force Behind the 917
John Wyer: The Mastermind of Racing Strategy
The Breakthrough: Solving the 917’s Instability
The 1970 Racing Season: A New Era Begins
The 1970 Le Mans: A Historic Victory
The 917’s Dominance: A Legacy of Speed
The Future of Porsche Racing
Conclusion: The Enduring Impact of the 917
Creating the Porsche 917
“Of course other racing cars can claim glittering track records, but none can claim to have left such a legacy. The 917 never competed in a world championship Grand Prix or at the Indy 500, yet this sports car was measurably faster than contemporary Grand Prix machines. And on the course for which it was designed, Le Mans, it wrote a new chapter in the pursuit of maximum speed. In its second generation, it became simply the fastest racing car of its time.”
– From the book by author Peter Morgan, ‘Porsche 917, The Winning Formula’
And so we’re talking about the Porsche 917 and I just read an excerpt from an unbelievable book. I’m going to tell you all about that book in just a second. And then we’re going to dive into the creation of this amazing machine that came out of nowhere to shock the racing world.
The story of the Porsche 917 is so much more than the amazing car itself. It’s also a thrilling tale of teamwork. Dedication, and most importantly iteration. The constant pursuit to improve and perfect the car that would roar past all the competition on the racetrack for almost two and a half years.
Iteration was the key to the 917 as we’re about to find out here in just a minute. Even with a newly designed super powerful monster v12 engine, the Porsche’s original design was not great.
But the determined engineers and drivers relentlessly tested, studied, and tweaked the initial car until they found the perfect combination. The formula for success was literally pounded out through blood, sweat, and tears and constant trial and error from the racetrack and back into the shop, then over and over again, finding the perfect balance.
Which makes this Porsche 917 story just too good not to share.
So I had a ton of fun this week going deep on this incredible story. And in the process, I found an amazing book. Now we have to talk about this book. The title is, ‘Porsche 917, The Winning Formula,” by author Peter Morgan. The book was published in 1999, but before that, the author spent over two years researching his incredible book. Peter Morgan personally interviewed the players directly involved in the Porsche 917.
From the drivers to the managers. It’s the complete story straight from the original sources. And the book is so detailed, you really have to go through the entire thing a few times just to fully absorb how this all played out.
Just like Peter Morgan says in his book, he says this Porsche 917 story is, quote, “one to be savored and enjoyed like a finely matured wine.” Now, Morgan wrote that line in the acknowledgments of his book on the very first page, as the introduction, and when I read that statement for the first time I remember thinking well that sounds like it might be a little too dramatic for just a story about a car savored and enjoyed like fine wine.
But then I actually read the book and a few days later after watching a bunch of racing movies and interviews and then rereading the book a few more times I couldn’t agree more with the author. I really enjoyed this story and loved every minute I spent learning about it.
And it wasn’t until the third time through the book and a week of thinking about this story that I actually began to fully understand the entire thing. And just like all my other episodes I’ve done, this was no different.
The further I dug into the story and the more I understood the Porsche 917, the more appreciation I began to have for this incredible beast of a car and the unconventional, determined and fearless effort of the team that created it.
So now we have to get into this story and I started that episode by reading a quote from Peter Morgan’s book. The excerpt I read touched on a few key things and that’s why I wanted to start the episode by reading it. So two key points. It said the car was designed for Le Mans specifically. That’s the first thing to remember. The goal for Porsche was to build a car that would win the 24 hours of Le Mans. And then the opening quote I read also mentions that in its second generation, it became the fastest racing car of its time, is how the author Peter Morgan says it.
And it’s the second generation or the improvements that the team made to the 917, which made it completely unstoppable on the track. So this is a story about trial and error, measuring results, making adjustments, then correcting mistakes and searching for an edge that’s not in plain sight.
Now we have to talk about why the car wasn’t good enough from the very start.
Porsche developed a V12 engine for the new 917. So the new race car had 550 horsepower. That’s an insane amount of power back in 1969. But there was a problem. The car was unstable. There was too much power. So especially at high speeds, the back end of the car wouldn’t stay on the track. It was lifting up off the ground and weaving back and forth across the entire width of the track.
So drivers were leery and some of them called the car undrivable and the engineers couldn’t figure it out. So at the 24 hour of Le Mans in 1969, Porsche learned their car was a long way from perfection.
Now the 917 was by far the fastest car on the track based on the practice laps, but raw speed is only part of the equation at Le Mans. Of the three 917 cars that entered the race, one had to drop out from an oil leak, another 917 car crashed on the very first lap and the driver, John Wolfe, was killed in the crash. The third car, after building up a lead of almost 50 miles by the 21st hour of the race, blew its transmission and had to drop out as well.
So none of the 917s finished the race in 1969. So Porsche had a big problem. They had a beast of a car that could blow by everybody on the straightaways with a 30 mile per hour speed advantage but the car had major engineering issues that had to be sorted out before Porsche had any chance at winning Le Mans.
And when I say Porsche, I’m really talking about the guy who’s heading up this entire 917 program, a guy named Ferdinand Piech, who was the grandson of the founder of the company, Ferdinand Porsche. So I learned all about this guy, Ferdinand Piech, who was just a young guy in the late 1960s, and he was quite a character.
And the book goes into the full history of how Piech rose up the ranks at Porsche with his very aggressive personality. So I want to read this from the book because it gives you good idea of who we’re dealing with here with Ferdinand Piech.
The book says, by the time he completed his engineering degree at Zurich and gained his diploma in 1962, Piech knew the workings of the automobile and the Porsche company inside and out.
But he had one other essential characteristic that was to mark him out as special. Energy. He was a born achiever. Who with the benefit of youth, would not accept that there were limitations to anything in life.
Okay, so here’s this force of nature as it turns out. The grandson of Ferdinand Porsche. And this is the type of person you would want to head up this entire effort to build the ultimate race car from scratch, the 917.
Someone who would not accept limitations to anything. So the book goes on a little bit more about Piech, this young lightning rod who’s just shot out of a cannon and wants to win races and run the entire company.
So Peter Morgan explains it like this. Even at this early stage in his career, the young Piesch had no doubt that he had to quickly establish his credentials as a future head of Porsche.
So that’s Peter Morgan in his book explaining what is going on with this Piech character. I love that description. The author says Piech at his job could be compared to an approaching typhoon.
So now you can see the force of nature behind the Porsche 917. It’s this guy Piech and he had the ultimate goal to win the 24 hours of Le Mans. And we can now just imagine after the 1969 Le Mans race with one of the drivers getting killed in a crash, then the other two cars breaking down, I’m sure Piech is not amused at what’s happening at this point in time. And even to add to that frustration, the third 917 car had a huge lead of 50 miles when it had a gearbox issue on the 21st hour of the race and didn’t finish.
And how frustrating would that be? That would almost be worse than breaking down at the start of the race, just to be that close and have a giant lead and then break down. And then the awful tragedy of having a driver killed in a crash on the first lap. So Piech needed to make his next move. And it was a move that would shock the racing world.
So what Piesch did is he went out and recruited one of the most accomplished and respected guys in racing to lead the 917 team the next year. He recruited John Wyer.
Alright, so we know a little bit about Ferdinand Piech, but what’s the deal with this guy John Wyer? Why would Piech want to hire someone who, just like the book said, was so opposite?
And not just different personalities and ages, but different nationalities. John Wyer was from England and it was a totally new concept for Porsche to hire someone outside of the company and outside the country to head up their racing team.
But there was a perfectly good reason Piech wanted Wyer, because he was one of the best to ever do it.
And I’ll have to do an entire episode on John Wyer at some point, because this guy is a racing legend. He already had several wins at Le Mans.
One was with Aston Martin and the DBR1. And if you’re not familiar with that story, it’s amazing. David Brown and Aston Martin win their first Le Mans with none other than Carroll Shelby as one of the drivers, which many now call Aston Martin’s finest hour. But that was John Wyer, who was the team manager for that historic victory in 1959.
Then Weier goes to Ford and helps develop the iconic GT40s to compete against Ferrari in the Ford vs Ferrari wars of the 1960s. And then Wyer starts his own team, JW Automotive Engineering, and wins Le Mans in 1968 and 1969 with the Ford GT40s.
So this is one of the best team managers anywhere and Ferdinand Piche wants to hire him to run the Porsche 917s for the 1970 racing season. So with all that being said, now you might be wondering, why would John Wyer want anything to do with Porsche? He seems to be doing just fine. Why would he go for Piech’s pitch to join forces with the Porsche team?
Well, it turns out John Wyer had enormous respect for what Porsche was doing. First of all, they found a major loophole in the racing rule book that allowed them to create this beast of a car in the first place.
It was actually a new rule that limited the engine capacity to just 3 liters for all prototype cars, but the new rules also said that the engine capacity for sports cars could be as high as 5 liters. So what was considered a sports car? Under the new rules, to qualify a car to race at Le Mans as a sports car, a manufacturer had to build at least 50 cars as real vehicles that could be sold to customers.
But then the minimum requirement was dropped from 50 to 25. Now, Porsche could build 25 cars and race in the larger 5-liter engine class, the sports car class. And that’s exactly what they did. And I should add, these rules were written in 1968. And they were set to expire at the end of the racing season in 1971.
So going into this entire 917 effort, Porsche always knew their window for this endeavor was just three years, and they knew the rules would change after 1971. So they knew all this going into it, but they did it anyway, which is pretty incredible.
Anyway, back to our question on why John Wyer would want anything to do with Porsche. He saw what they were up to, and the way Porsche exploited the rule book didn’t bother Wyer in the least.
So Peter Morgan talks about this in his book. You can see now that John Wyer was paying attention to Porsche and was impressed by the firepower they were deploying into the 917. And once Piech reached out to Wyer, and even though the book says John Wyer was quote, “stunned,” when he was initially approached by Porsche, it wasn’t long before it was a done deal.
So now Wyer is going to lead a team of Porsche 917s in the racing seasons of 1970 and 1971. Along with Wyer was his sponsor, Gulf Oil.
And so the wire team would become known as the Gulf Porsche’s with the light blue and orange colors. Those colors that everyone can picture in their minds right now. These cars would become iconic and we’ll get into that in a minute, but you can’t forget about Piech. This force of nature who wouldn’t accept failure. He wasn’t going to hand over the entire program and all his hopes and dreams of winning Le Mans to just one guy, John Wyer.
Ferdinand Piech is way smarter than that. He’s always a couple moves ahead of everybody else. This is the guy who was known as a sort of a dictator and for igniting in-house rivalries and confrontations just to keep people motivated and on their toes. Pietsch was not about to let a wire Porsche 917 take any headlines. He didn’t want one single person taking the credit for any success that he was planning to have in the next two years, especially an Englishman like Wyer.
This was about Porsche, the company, not the team manager or driver or anyone else. So in a brilliant move, Piech created a second 917 team, an in-house team that would race directly against John Wyer’s team with the same cars. And Piech keeps the entire plan a secret for as long as he could. Now we get to the first big race of the 1970 season.
It’s the 24 hours of Daytona and this was the very first race of the newly designed Porsche 917 K, the short tail version that everyone now is so familiar with. And John Wyer has two 917s in this race. So the Gulf Porsche 917s were the big attraction before the race as the cars are rolled out onto the track. But there’s something that caught John Wyer’s attention, probably more than anything else that day.
The in-house Porsche racing team called Porsche-Salzburg rolled out their own 917 onto the track to challenge Wyer’s team.
So there it is, and if John Weier and his team didn’t already understand how this was going to work, it was at this moment when they all realized, Ferdinand Piech and Porsche were not playing around.
Here’s another 917 car identical to their Gulf 917s lining right up against them in the 24 hours of Daytona. Just some friendly competition is probably how Piech tried to make it seem on the surface, but it was anything but friendly. In the world of racing, this was a wake up call to John Wyer and his team and something they’d have to deal with for the next two years.
But John Wyer’s team would steal the show at Daytona. The Wyer-Porsche 917s with the Gulf Oil livery finished in first and second place and shattered the track record by 190 miles. And now the Porsche Salzburg 917 car wasn’t able to finish the race. had a gas tank malfunction, but that didn’t really matter. The game was officially on for John wire and everybody at Porsche.
The two rival 917 teams would push each other race after race, just exactly how Ferdinand Piech drew it up.
It’s a very smart move there and you can see Piech knew he had an amazing car and it could win any race, but he wanted to have the two separate teams driving the car.
So the highly respected and accomplished John Wyer couldn’t take too much control of the entire situation. So now the racing season is officially underway in 1970. The Gulf Porsche cars have just taken first and second place at Daytona.
And the modified second generation 917 is making shockwaves in the racing world after smashing the track record in its very first race. Both the in-house Porsche-Salzburg team and John Wyer’s Gulf Porsche team have officially set their sights on the biggest race of the year. The 24 hours of Le Mans held in just a few months. But I just said it was the second generation modified version of the 917.
So what changed? This is a huge part of the story. So now we’re going to have to go back to the opening quote I read to start this episode. And the reason I began the episode with that passage from the book is because it mentions the key to the story in just two sentences. It said, the 917 was designed to win Le Mans, but in its original form, the car wasn’t great. And we talked about that already, but the last sentence of the opening passage I read was,
Quote, “In its second generation, it became simply the fastest racing car of its time.” I said this was a story about iteration as much as anything else. Constant improvement. So how did they solve the puzzle? So we have to back up a few months now before the 24 hours of Daytona race to the previous October of 1969.
John Wyer scheduled a three day test session at Zeltweg, this racetrack in Austria, with both rival 917 Porsche teams present so they could figure out how to improve the car for Daytona. So the two racing teams laid every possibility on the table, trying to figure out how to keep the back end of the car down on the track without creating too much drag, which was an absolute must for Piech. Piech wanted high power and low drag.
So Porsche engineer Peter Falk was there who had just recovered from a major accident when a car he was test driving hit a deer and Falk flew out of the car and broke some ribs and he was in the hospital for a few months, but he was released just in time to attend this three day test session at Zeltweg.
And here’s how he sets it up. Peter Falk was quoted in the book and he says this, he says, we had done some tests on the South loop of the Nurburgring. But it was not enough.
Falk recalls, “We hadn’t had enough time, you know, long enough to stay with the problem and really understand it.” So he’s talking about the aerodynamics of the car. They just didn’t fully understand the problem yet. But now they get their chance to immerse themselves. And here’s where the two Porsche teams would make the major breakthrough that led to the 917 K model.
The short tail that would dominate the track for the next two years. Here’s Peter Morgan again from his book. says, quote,
“There are many different versions of what happened at this test because as a consequence, the handling of the 917 was transformed almost at a stroke. The car became the racing driver’s dream, devoid of all the earlier nervousness. It is not surprising therefore that everybody wanted the credit and consequently everybody claimed it.” – From the book by Peter Morgan, “Porsche 917, The Winning Formula”
So the car was transformed with both rival Porsche teams at the track here at Salzburg working out the kinks in the car. They figured it out. And then of course, both teams also claimed the credit. But what did they do? What did they find? They discovered and the book debates who discovered it first, but on the test track they discovered a major flaw with the car.
There was no downforce at the tail. The air wasn’t flowing to the rear of the car where it could hit the spoiler and create any downforce. So they decided to build up the tail with some sheet metal they had at the track. And they built up the tail high enough to where the air could hit it and push the car back down to the road at high speeds. And without creating hardly any additional drag. So this was the big breakthrough, and it was all about just spending time through trial and error on the track for a couple of days with the highly experienced drivers and engineers from the two Porsche teams.
And then it became obvious to all of them almost right at the same time. So the book goes into detail on the background of each of the team members who were present that day. And a few of John Wyer’s drivers were recruited from the great Ford GT cars that won multiple Le Mans races just a few years before.
They noticed the same issue back in the early days of the GT40. And then it’s funny because there’s this debate on who discovered the solution to the 917 first during these three days of testing. Was it John Wyer’s team or was it the Porsche Salzburg team? And you can read the biographies of all these different drivers and engineers who were there that day. And they all have a slightly different story of how the built up tail end of the 917 played out.
And there’s another famous story about how one of the drivers noticed there were smashed bugs all over the front of the car. But then as you look back to the rear spoiler, there were hardly any dead bugs stuck to the car as it raced around the track. So that could only mean one thing, that the air was not hitting the rear spoiler at all. So that’s another version of the story on how these memorable days at the track played out. But there was unanimous agreement on the results.
There was no disputing the time on the clock. The car was several seconds faster around the track than before the changes. And the drivers noticed almost immediately how much better the car handled and performed. Here’s one more description from the book on how they operated on the 917 right there on the track. So this is a major adjustment to the car. They’re pulling out aluminum sheet metal and screws and duct tape. And now the teams were pumped and probably just beside themselves in amazement at this huge leap in performance they had just given the 917.
But there was one more problem. They had to show the newly designed car to Ferdinand Piech and explain why they just built up a giant wedge on the tail of the car. Because Piech was all about zero drag. He did not want drag. That was his pet peeve and everybody knew it. So there’s this great story in the book about Peter Falk who was one of the Porsche Salzburg engineers being nervous to show the car to Piech.
He had to drive down to this little airstrip near the test track to pick up Piech, so Ferdinand Piech flew in from Porsche headquarters to check out the progress. And Peter Falk drives over to pick him up, knowing that he’s about to show his boss the 917 with this giant built up tail they just screwed on the back of the car with sheet metal. And Falk says he drove down to the airstrip with his “heart beating.” He was so nervous to tell Piech what they did to the car.
So he warns Piech when he gets out of the airplane that the car looks a little different than the last time you saw it. If you can imagine Falk kind of trying to just break the news to Piech nice and easy before he drives him up to the test track to see the car. And then Falk adds this in the book. He says that when Piech finally saw the car, “his face dropped.”
So but in the end Piech was okay with the change to the car because it was so much better. He couldn’t argue with the results and so again It’s so funny to read this full account because once all the guys at the test track saw that Piche was going to be fine with the change and that he actually was really excited about it. Then everybody tried to take the credit for the idea, it’s classic. But they do admit in the book eventually they admit that it was a team effort that day on the test track.
It’s just so funny to read about these two ultra highly competitive race teams where the stakes are sky high and they’re all putting their heads together on this test track to solve this major problem and then trying to retell the story about who really came up with the solution. And then finally in the book, another amazing little detail that I just love about this part of the story, but they had to get the car back to Porsche headquarters and build a real tailpiece.
They had to rip off the sheet metal contraption that they screwed on the back at the test track. And so to make the final alteration, what would become the 917K, the K being for the German word, Kurtz, meaning short tail. So they made this change to the car. And one of the designers explains in the book, he says, this is a quote from the book. said, “The height of the back was not made in the wind tunnel. It was just by rule of thumb.”
So again, this brings us all the way back to the passage I read at the start of the episode. I read that the car’s second generation, it became the fastest racing car of its time. This was it. These changes they made by building up that tail and giving the car the downforce it would need to hold it to the track. This is the moment when the 917K would go on to dominate.
And the next race after this is the 24 hours of Daytona, which we already talked about, but you needed to hear this test track story to know what occurred at this Daytona race. And that’s when John Wyer’s team finished first and second place with two of these 917 K short tail cars that had the built up rear. It was the same tail where they use just a rule of thumb to get the height without a wind tunnel and the same 917k car that is so iconic today.
And so people still regard this as one of the greatest car designs in history. In fact, I did an episode on Horacio Pagani. And that episode was all about how Horacio got his start and then designed the Pagani Zonda C12. The very first Pagani supercar.
And when I was learning all about Horacio, I stumbled on this video of him talking about his favorite car of all time, and it was this car, the Porsche 917. I couldn’t believe it.
The interviewer asked him what his favorite car was, and I was waiting for him to name one of his favorite Pagani models. And then he just goes, “It’s the Porsche 917.” And he didn’t stop there. Horacio started talking about how he collects scale models of the Porsche 917K, and he owns like over 200 of these models.
And then he mentions how he’ll just have his tea in the morning and grab one of his Porsche 917 models and just stare at it while he’s having his tea in the morning. And I’m a huge fan of Pagani and I think Horacio’s story is amazing. And I’m going to do more episodes on him, but I thought that was awesome. And I never forgot that. And it’s super high praise to hear Horacio talk all about the 917 like that. He’s just a fan of racing, and a fan of great design.
And so that was awesome to stumble on that interview of Horacio. Anyways, so the two rival Porsche teams literally hammered this thing out on a three day test track session and then created one of the most iconic car designs of all time. So now we have to finish this incredible story. We know how the 917K model was perfected and the two rival teams were pitted against each other by the maniacal Ferdinand Piech. Then they all roll into Daytona in early 1970 and John Wyer just crushes everybody else and sets records.
But we still have the big race coming up. After all, this car was built to win Le Mans. And that hasn’t happened yet. They raced at Le Mans the year before in 1969. They had three 917s in the race, but none of them finished even though they had a big lead in the 21st hour, but still no victory.
So what happens next? The 1970 24 hour of Le Mans would be the big victory for Porsche and the 917k. The short tail version of the car would take the checkered flag, but it was not John Wyer’s Gulf car. It would be the in-house Salzburg team that delivered Porsche its very first victory at Le Mans.
And this was a huge win for Porsche in so many ways. It was the very first victory at Le Mans after several years of battling Ford and Ferrari and getting beat down year after year. They finally trounced both of them. It was also a year that Steve McQueen, Hollywood superstar, produced the movie titled Le Mans. And the star of the show was the Porsche 917 K in the Gulf Oil blue and orange colors. And still to this day, people have a hard time remembering that it wasn’t even the Golf 917 Porsche that won the race.
It’s such an iconic livery on the car that everybody now remembers that Gulf Porsche from the movie above all the others, even the Porsche car that won. Now the Porsche 917 didn’t just win in 1970, but the next year at the 1971 Le Mans, the 917 wins again.
The second year in a row and this time it’s the Porsche 917k sponsored by Martini International. But then John Wyer’s team, JW Automotive Engineering finishes second place with the iconic 917k Gulf Oil Car. And then two Ferrari 512s finish third and fourth in that race, which I’m sure made the first and second place finishes even that much sweeter for Porsche.
So we have to wrap this story up for now and you can be sure I’ll have more to come on this on the amazing Porsche 917. But once the car was altered with the higher built up tail, which created the 917 K model, once that car hit the track, it completely dominated for two and a half years. Not just the 1970 and 71 Le Mans races, but it won almost every race it entered in 1970.
Like seven out of the eight races or something crazy like that. They dominated. Then they dominated again in 1971, taking first place in another eight out of the 10 races. And then of course, just like Porsche knew back in 1968, going into this entire story, they knew the rules were going to change that would outlaw the 917 for the 1972 season.
And that’s what happened. And just another reason that I love this story. Porsche knew they would only have this small window of about three years to build this amazing car and make a serious run at a Le Mans victory. And not only did they pull it off, but they crushed the competition and created one of the most iconic cars of all time. Still talked about to this day as one of the greatest ever.
Now in one of those same Gulf oil 917 models used in the Steve McQueen movie Le Mans, it’s coming up for auction finally. The current owner, Jerry Seinfeld, has owned the car for over 20 years. And after a full restoration, he’s finally selling one of these iconic golf Porsche cars.
So it’ll be fascinating to watch the final sale price on that historic car. And maybe I’ll give an update in a future episode on how that auction went for Jerry and his 917K.
So one of the things I’ve been learning over and over again in auto racing, there’s not only a relentless pursuit of speed and horsepower, but what I’m learning in all these awesome stories and great books that I’m finding that maybe more than anything, there’s a relentless pursuit to find the unseen advantage, to get the upper hand on the competition. Any way to exploit or bend the rules just a little bit farther than anyone else, to gain any edge possible.
Gordon Murray talks about that. I have an episode on the amazing McLaren F1. And I remember Gordon Murray mentioning that racing is all about finding loopholes. And I didn’t really fully grasp what he was talking about. But then I started seeing it in every racing story. And Gordon has some incredible stories of his own. You should check out his Formula One car that he designed in 1978.
He very carefully interpreted the rulebook, then he designed a car with a fan underneath it that sucked it down to the road, creating so much downforce that the car was quickly banned after it won its first and only race. So you should really check out Gordon Murray if you want a few more examples of how to think outside the box. I loved making that episode on the McLaren F1 and the legend Gordon Murray.
Anyways, Porsche found their advantage in late 1960s and pounced on their opportunity that nobody else saw or at least nobody else was quick enough to execute on. And it’s an amazing story not just about racing super fast cars around a racetrack, but it’s a story of strategy, like a high stakes game of chess mixed in with fearlessness, unconventional thinking, staying cool under pressure, and the obsession to be the best.
Like I already said earlier, I had a blast making this episode and I can’t wait to learn more about Porsche and their racing history. One thing I’m really looking forward to is reading all about their 24 hour of Le Mans victories coming up later in the 1970s and all through the 1980s. It turns out that Porsche might be all done with racing the amazing 917 in 1971, but now they would go on to develop some of the most epic Le Mans race cars ever created.
Porsche would soon win at Le Mans 10 times in a 12 year span in the late 70s and 1980s with the Porsche 936, the 956, and the 962. So you can guarantee I’ll be diving into those cars as soon as I possibly can to find out what the heck was going on there.
So I’ve said this before but I’ll say it again these stories from the automotive industry are as good as it gets. It’s sheer grit and determination, blood, sweat and heartbreak, total failure, iteration, and at times just an all out bare knuckled chess match and not for the faint of heart.
But they are awesome stories. I’ve done episodes on Enzo Ferrari and how he went from just a kid who was keen on racing like he described himself in the book to creating Scuderia Ferrari, one of the greatest racing teams in history.
Then I’ve done an episode on Karl Benz, Gordon Murray, Horacio Pagani, and now the Porsche 917. Every one of these stories is packed full of so many lessons and the amazing characters that have left their mark and found a way to create their life’s work.
And one last thing, if you love cars and want to deep dive into racing history, I strongly recommend you buy this book from Peter Morgan. Published in 1999, the title is “Porsche 917, The Winning Formula.” And it’s packed with tons of information, so you might have to go through the book three or four times like I did. But after years of amazing research, Peter Morgan tells the complete story of the 917. And I also have to tell you this, it’s not the cheapest book in the world.
You might have to pay 50 to 60 bucks for this used book, but I can honestly say that it’s worth every penny.
So have a great rest of your day wherever you may be. And if you know someone who might like this racing story, do me a favor and share this episode with them.
My goal is to hopefully encourage them to – learn more.