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11 May 2011

PORSCHE WINS LE MANS


It's 13 years since Porsche won Le Mans and despite encouraging noises it will be quite a few years before they win it again .Even if the VW parent company decided tomorrow that Porsche should take over the group's sports car racing responsibility from Audi it would take a number of years for Porsche to bring a competitive car to the grid . Also all the indications are that Porsche would want to compete with a new technology platform -- Hybrid or some form of KERS.

I was fortunate to be at Le Mans in 1998 when the  superb GT1 driven by McNish,Aiello and Ortelli won after a very hard fought race. Porsche made a big investment to win the race .Perhaps they already knew that it was going to be a long time before they graced the grid again as the then CEO , Wiedeking, was not exactly a big motor racing fan .
The GT1 is a 3.2 turbocharged watercooled car with a carbon fibre monocoque and a central body section which silhoutted a Porsche 911coupe.It looks the part from every angle.

The photo above was taken on a Canon EOS 5 SLR on high speed Kodak Ektachrome slide film which I had push processed to gain further film speed ( which explains the poor quality) and shows the car exiting the Porsche curves just as night was falling.

1 comment:

  1. a great atmostpheric shot John...

    Hopefully the factory will run a factory team again before I shuffle off the mortal coil?

    ReplyDelete