Porsche 935 "Moby Dick"

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Introduction

In the famous novel written by Herman Melville "Moby Dick" it’s difficult to ascertain which is more worrying between the great white cetacean and the sinister and damned character of Captain Ahab, haunted by his desperate whaling, or the sea, with all humours and mysteries which are hidden in its chasms. Not even "Pequod" the old whaler, with its strange collection of bony trophies and the tokens of years, seems to be a place so much safe as to face waves and sea monsters. Certainly, he who gave the name of that famous white cetacean to the Porsche 935/78 didn’t mean to make reference to a rather ominous story told in that classic of the American literature. He only meant to refer to the smart streamlined shape of a long tailed car which reminded us, in addition to the white colour under its Martini livery, of the shapes of the whale described in the novel. However, it was just from those shapes that caused the observer to feel certain restlessness due to their feature which was clearly taken to extremes: "Moby Dick", since its appearance and with a disarming simplicity, has been turning out a difficult vehicle. The feeling is confirmed by the words said by Mauro Baldi, who as an Italian driver had the chance to drive one of the four constructed examples of this car: "Moretti asked me for the 1000 km Spa and the 935 variant "Moby Dick" at first made a not very agreeable impression on me. At that time I was running in Formula One and the 935 seemed closer to the spirit of an elaborated car rather than to a car purposely made for competition".

GENERATION "935"

Baldi’s remark exactly suited the rules in force since 1976, which inspired "Moby Dick": with the exclusion of special stress on the sports prototypes, considered in a falling stage, the World of Makes was reserved to the new Group 5, made by cars which kept a clear configuration (silhouette) and the basic components of a current production car. A further Group 6 also saw prototypes running, but with distances reduced to 4 Hours, instead of 6 h or alternatively 1000 kilometres in the contest with the Silhouette. From its origin the Group 5 had an elastic technical rule that allowed to remarkably modify the car used as a starting platform and engineers ended by going further on, when a certain CSI tolerant behaviour confirmed the several interpretations going up to extremes, operated by the manufacturers and setters. On the 1976 championship, only BMW entered with its aspirated 3.5 CSL and Porsche with the 935/76, first car of that winning dynasty, which had to hide a 911 Turbo (930 version) under its shapes. Starting from the 934, Porsche had been destined to Group 4, the Stuttgart engineers, under Norbert Singer the project manager, immediately revealed their creativity. First choice was the engine displacement: the rule only allowed operating on the bore in regard to the current production engine and it was necessary to consider the 1.4 coefficient to balance the power of turbo engines against the aspirated ones. Thus they decided to reduce the bore to 9.28 mm and the total displacement less than three litres of current production turbo, exactly to 2850 cc. The use of the comparison coefficient fitted the car into the class "less than 4000 cc" and as per rule had a prescribed total weight of 970 kg that Porsche, having lots of experience in light weight materials, was sure to manage easily. In fact the first 935 had a weight of only 880 kg and it was necessary to ballast it in accordance with the rules. The flat-6 engine boxer produced 590 hp at 7900 rpm, with the turbine adjusted to supply a pressure of 1.2 bars. Air-to-water exchangers were placed on the sides, before the rear wheels. The suspensions were modified by using coil springs instead of the torsion bars derived from the 911, and raising the attachment of the arms to the chassis it was created an anti-lowering behaviour to the geometry. On the rear, where there was the most of weight, it was added an anti-roll bar adjustable from the cockpit. With the purpose of a better unloading of all power to the ground, special tyres were used and developed by Dunlop with a wider diameter of rolling, taking into account of 15" limit of width prescribed by the rule. The tyres of the 935 were fitted on 19" diameter massive rear rims and 16" on front. The designers played a lot with aerodynamics taking advantage of the rear larger wing derived from the 911 Turbo, for a support to another more effective drawn back wing. At mid-season 76’ rear bonnet and mudguards were made of a fibreglass unique shape with streamlined headlights, offering wider space and more aerodynamic stability compared with original shapes. Therefore, just from the beginning the only link left between the original shape of the 911 Turbo and the 935 was the roof panel and the doors fairing. The 935/76 won at Mugello and Vallelunga, lost the comparison with the BMW 3.5 CSL at Silverstone, Nürburgring and Zeltweg because of problems of reliability, due to a revision of the supercharging system prescribed by CSI, but then it managed to cut its competitors off at Watkins Glen and Dijon winning the World Championship for Makes. On the other hand, it was very difficult for BMW to stand up to Porsche, with an engine gap of 40-50 hp in comparison with the competition. Frightened at the 935 brute horsepower, CSI tried to make some corrections to the rules, in order to favour the cars with front engine like BMW 3.5 CSL. The Bavarian Motor Works, however, didn’t take part at the start of the new season, concentring every effort on the German championship, where it was expected an easier comparison with two-litre class Ford Escort. Meantime, Porsche 935, in its evolution type 77, had become stronger thanks to those modifications of the rules that, theoretically, should have favoured front drags. The frame of the vehicle was, by then, made by a tube section inside the central body of current production. All the rear section, as already made for the front one, was fitted in a unitary fibreglass structure, taking full advantage of the rules concerning the use of aerodynamic devices. As for the engine, from the big single turbine they passed to two smaller units which, thanks to a minor inertia, reduced Turbo lag and up rating the power to 630 hp at 8000 rpm with a boost pressure of 1.4 bars. It’s useless to specify who was the winner of the 1977 World Championship for Makes with the last evolution of the 935 that ran far and wide and the only valid competition of the 935/76 customer racing cars. That excessive power cost Porsche a fierce campaign of press that put the blame on Porsche not taking up the challenge of the BMW, which was fighting in the two litre class in the German championship. On the contrary, it would have been more logic to blame the Bavarian Motor Works for giving up the fight with renewed means against the 935 in the World Championship for Makes. The behaviour of the German press made angry the Porsche top managers who decided, in a great hurry, to produce the 935 "Baby", equipped with a turbocharged engine of 1425 cc. In spite of the reduced displacement, the new unit having 1.4 bars boost could still produce no less than a good 370 hp at 8000 rpm. However, the bravura piece was the loss of weight of the 935 up to 725 kg a good 245 kg less than the 77 version: all that involved the change of mind for all the components and a new rear suspension. The "Baby", designed and constructed in only three months in a great hurry, entered Nuremberg race after only a very short shake down on Weissach track. That made it understandable Jacky Ickx’s retire, exhausted by hot temperature and with a car not yet fully developed and ungovernable. But at Hockenheim the opponents were heavily slapped, because the 935, always driven by Ickx, during the test got two seconds less than the rivals’ times and in race it finished with half a lap’s lead over the second classified car. After this violent retaliation, the car was put in "mothballs" (storage) and raced never again.

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History

"MOBY DICK": ACT FOUR OF THE 935 SAGA

In 1977 Porsche with the 935 had won the World Championship for Makes in Europe and Trans Am Championship in the US. Practically there was no competition and the same targets could have already achieved also for 1978, but at Weissack nobody rested on his laurels and Norbert Singer dreamt of "breaking the bank" at the 24 Hours of Le Mans by means of a car derived from the 935 current production. In those years Aco Le Mans managers showed intelligence in understanding how harmful was the Silhouette rule for the world of endurance races by trying to turn the famous 24 Hours into a protected reserve where the prototypes were still playing the leading role. In those days the comparison was above all between Porsche 936, the winner in the 1976-1977 editions, and Renault turbo Alpines. The Stuttgart Motor Works, with its new challenge, wanted to introduce a third new element of interest but, at the same time, making competition with itself. Beyond the target fixed up by Norbert Singer, it was necessary a further development of the 935 to solve some problem which came out from the past versions, starting from a certain fragility shown by the engines during the 1977 season. Already in 1972 with the 917 12-cylinder boxer they realised they have achieved such a power that it was difficult to go far without having one head with four valves per cylinder and a twin overhead camshaft. However, that layout wasn’t compatible with the untouchable dogma of the exclusive air cooling that, from the beginning, had featured Porsche racing cars and of current production. At those days they found a miraculous answer in the boost that allowed an astronomic power performance without using four valves per cylinder and violating the holiness of the air-cooling. The turbo was then spread over the 911 series and the following generations of racing cars, making Porsche one of the few motor works capable of mastering what was still considered in the 70s as a very young and pioneering technology. Now with the 935 six-cylinder engine they newly reached the limit of the layout related to the two valves, and further increases of power could be only got by boost pressures so as to jeopardise the proverbial reliability of mechanics, or by turning to the four valves and water cooling. But this time there were neither saints nor miraculous technologies to avoid turning to that solution A technical analysis on risks and opportunities of different possible solutions brought Norbert Singer’s team work to choose the capacity of 3.2 litres, which with the charge of 1.4 factor meant to fit the new car into the class between 4000 and 4500 cc, and a weight of 1025 kg, higher than the one of the precedent variants. On the other hand, according to calculations, the advantage of a power obtainable with an increase of displacement was such as to balance the increase of weight. With a bore of 95.8 mm and a stroke of 74.4 mm, the engine displayed a new distribution layout with four sodium valves per cylinder operated by a twin-overhead camshaft. Not to disregard the construction tradition of the Motor Works and in accordance with the rule which provided the use of the current production cylinder block, the water cooling was restricted to the cylinder heads, leaving the traditional fan for the cylinder cooling. As for the 935/78 special purpose radiators were placed before the front mudguards. The minor required air flow allowed the fan, which rotated at a ratio of 1.34:1 rounds with respect to the drive shaft, to be displaced from the horizontal position, over the block, to the vertical one which was traditional for the engines of the 911. Besides, the major access to valves made it useless the use of the head gaskets, replaced by an electron-beam welding. On the basis of the 935/78 successful experience, the boost layout envisaged two more KKK turbines. The new engine supplied a good 750 hp at 8200 rpm, with a pressure between 1.4 and 1.5 bars and a temperature of the activation of the cylinders passing from 280° C to 200°C for the fully air-cooled engine, thus improving its reliability and re-opening the race for the increase of powers. In the setup of the new car it was envisaged the solution of the problem related to the axle shafts that happened on the old 935 cars in the past season. They found out that the cause was due to a too high angle, forced by the rear rims of 19" diameter, at which the joints had to work overstressed by ever increasing powers. The solution was found by mounting the gearbox upside down 180 degrees longitudinally and redesigning the box and clutch so as the axle shafts could work above and not below the transmission shaft...They took special care of designing the breaking system taking into account the high top speed they wanted to gain. That sector was another reason of pride for Porsche that had always developed solutions which were at the forefront of technology. The 935/78 was fitted with light drilled discs of 332 mm diameter and 32 mm thickness, unitary with en-bloc callipers in light alloy and with four pistons devices with asbestos packing strips. Around the central body of the Porsche 911, fitted together with a light tube and rigid aluminium frame, they designed the aerodynamic shape of a long tail, particularly suitable for Le Mans circuit that with Hunaudieres at those times endless straight made a top speed research favourable to the disadvantage of the handling on the mixed route. To achieve his objective, once again Norbert Singer showed all his creativity in the interpretation of the Group 5 technical rule, also supported by the political power derived by the massive and by that time unrivalled presence in the world of the endurance races. Thanks to his great imagination, Singer took advantage of the rule article which allowed the elevation of the car floor pan up to the fairings of the doors. Thanks to the cut of the original floor pan and its replacement by a tubular reinforcement and a fibreglass lamina, he managed to raise the car floor up to 7.5 cm. At this point it was sufficient to take advantage of a loophole to lower all the mid-part of the body by 7.5 cm, obtaining a lower roof line. Nobody had any objection to it. They would have acted the same way with the fairing of the doors (that in the previous 935 cars kept the shape of the 911 original ones, re-entering with respect to the width of the rear and front bonnets) as a continuity of the rear aerodynamic device. This stratagem would have permitted a better negative lift, but CIS objected that the limit to the extension of the external aerodynamic devices was the car centre. Porsche had to content itself with the fairing of the front part of doors, achieving the objective only partly. However, they couldn’t utilize a rear wing as large as the body, not sufficiently effective, and they had to fall back on another narrower and higher mounted type. On the other hand, to obtain such a streamlined shape, Porsche had to homologate 935/78 as an evolution of the 911SC aspirated and not Turbo that, of its own, offered a bulky larger spoiler not compatible with the long-tail shape. The values obtained with this type of body were quite interesting: the penetration factor was equal to 0.358 with a drag reduction of 10%, thanks to a front section slightly minimized with respect to the old 935 cars. Front aerodynamic lift, a rather important problem on the other variants derived from the 911, was reduced, but in return, the long-tail shape increased the lift on the rear. The car appeared at the 6 h Silverstone, in May 1978, where it thrashed the competition with Jochen Mass and Jacky Ickx at its wheel, leaving all other rivals six laps behind. The English win seemed a good omen for next 24 Hours of Le Mans and, in fact the car driven by Rolf Stommelen mated with Manfred Schurti, made a resounding success with a qualifying lap (3:30,900) placing third, directly behind the 936 with Ickx-Pescarolo-Mass and Renault Alpine A443 with Jabouille-Depailler (3:28,400). It meant that the German crew had "removed paint" passing three other Alpines and two 936s able to fight for an overall win. In race the "Moby Dick" kept the leading position for a long time with an excellent high speed (366 km/h), but six hours were only missing to the finish when a blow-by of oil suggested the team to increase the rate so as to reach the finishing line. Stommelen and Schurti finished eighth. That year Porsche was mocked: not only it didn’t manage to win with the "Moby Dick" derived from the 911 series, but neither with the 936 cars forced to surrender to an Alpine-Renault with Pironi-Jaussaud. After the race the 935/78 engine was dismounted and they found out that the blow-by of oil was caused by a banal problem but mechanics wasn’t at all damaged. Porsche made the "Moby Dick" run in two other races in the September of that year, but in spite of the confirmation of its speed potentiality, its reliability failed: at the 6 Hours of Vallelunga: Jacky Ickx and Manfredi Schurti widely in the lead over the rivals, were obliged to retire because of some trouble due to mechanical fuel injection just when the race was getting to the final. Same destiny for Jckx alone at the Norisring 200 miles, it was the "Moby Dick" last race before Porsche decision to shelter it definitively at its famous museum. Its heir was also put in "mothballs" (storage), a car, which had to be fitted with a floor pan able to take advantage of ground effect (down force) and that didn’t go beyond the designing stage because of Martini Racing’s withdrawal. The objective to win the Le Mans race with a car, series derived, was equally achieved on next year by a twin-Turbo 935 three liters, prepared and fielded by Kremer Racing, a private team that intuited the use of new aerodynamic elements made of Kevlar instead of fiberglass and replaced the air-water intercoolers with the more efficacious air-to-air intercoolers. It’s the famous victory of "pee": Don Whittington, in fact, forced to stop along the track for a failure of one of the turbines, urinated on to cool it so as to improvise a repair sufficient to drive the car back to pits. The only other "Moby Dick" model directly constructed by the Motor Works, used as a spare car, is presently dismounted waiting for its restoration. If Porsche Motor Works refused to build other "Moby Dick" cars for their numerous potential customers and, even less to supply the 3211 cc engines with four-valve heads, it doesn’t mean that at this point the history of this model should be ended.

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"MOBY DICK" DREAMS AND REVERIES

The racing car, with its shape and speedy performance, had caught the public imagination and made many private teams dream later than the time in which a racing car could be defined an old one. Most of them tried to be inspired by what they could have seen on the track, but in 1980 Reinhold Joest , the owner of the team with same name, obtained by Porsche Motor Works the drawings of the "Moby Dick" chassis and body. He built a first model eliminating the partial fairing of the doors, which appeared on the 911 original drawing. The new "Moby Dick", 935/81 JR001 chassis, was destined to run in the Deutsche Rennsport Meistesrchaft (DRM) or also German National Championship, born in 1972 and considered the DTM ancestor. That series lived its major fame thanks to Group 5 entering these races, attracting teams all over Europe. If at the end Porsche granted the drawings on the 935/78 type was, on the contrary, inflexible for not granting also the original engine. Thus Joest had to turn to its variant with 3.2 liter 6-cylinder boxer, two valves, and a fully air-cooling recognizable for the horizontal big fan over the block. That type of engine, constructed in the customer department with Mahle’s cooperation, had been prepared since 1978 to offer an evolution to the private teams and keep them up with the new official variants of the Company. More strained (forced) and fragile than the four valves, the engine was with a boost pressure between 1.6 and 1.7 bar and could also produce 800 hp for short periods. After the successful experience of Kremer team in 1979, Porsche updated these engines with air-to-air intercoolers, which were mounted on the "Moby Dick"of Joest before the rear mudguards The German team also kept the characteristic right-hand drive that Singer had provided on the original project, taking into account the clockwise circulation used in most tracks. Joest called Jochen Mass to drive the car in the D.R.M. The former F1 driver scored a progressive set of placing, starting from the third place at Zolden, the second place at the 300 km Nürburgring and finally the win at Hockenheim. In April 1981 the car was sold to Gianpiero Moretti, the owner of the Momo and of the same name racing team running for the IMSA championship. Moretti took the car to the U.S. and mated with Jochen Mass arrived fourteenth on the speedy circuit of Riverside, after showing an excellent capacity in the first stages of the race. That year Moretti was also mated in some race by Al Holbert and Bobby Rahal, scoring two second places as best results at Mid Ohio and Portland. In 1982 the car was fielded in Europe, where it already turned out to be less competitive than in America. On the other hand, just in that year the old and not so right Silhouette rule was retired and replaced by the new consumption formula, which prescribed a fixed quantity of fuel per race. The new total weapon of Porsche was the 956, which turned out to hold the trump card In his European season, Moretti was often mated by above-mentioned Mauro Baldi, who reported some years later to Autosprint his worries about driving the car:"It was a car that I would define "adventurous". A terrifying power, but all aerodynamic load and mechanical grip were focused on the rear axle. The front axle was very light, practically it didn’t steer. It was just the beginning of turbo engine technology for Porsche; there was horsepower, but only at a pick rpm, and with a small hand lever on high peak pressure. After slow bends the engine failed, when the turbo was starting the "kick" which occurred was terrifying. The gearbox had four speeds, but it wasn’t a problem. Even if with more ratios, the power delay would have been equally disturbing. [ ] Brakes didn’t exist at all and after three laps a parachute would have been required to be at the worst jammed. [ ] All depended on the monstrous rear wing and tires excessively large. If one of these elements changed its efficiency, the car was ungovernable. "In fact, the car didn’t go farther than the fourth place gained in the race of May at Salzburgring. In1983 Moretti took his "Moby Dick" back to the U.S to race again in the IMSA championship, where with his team mates Bob Wollek and Serel van der Merwe, scored the second place at Pocono and two third places at Road Atlanta and Riverside. After that season the car was withdrawn, even if Moretti sold it only in 1993. After different transfer of property, "Moby Dick", restored in its white colored livery with black letters, fell into the expert hands of Yvan Mahe, the French setter and driver who fielded it on track for the first time in April 2009 on the occasion of the Classic Endurance Racing combined with the 1000 km Barcelona. Now let’s go in search of confirmation and Mr. Mahe, even if he is still immersed in a kind of honeymoon with the car has only come into his possession one year ago. He doesn’t deny that "it’s very difficult to push "Moby Dick" to its limits. Its real strength is on the top speed, also thanks to its particular aerodynamic long-tail shape. The ideal would be a speedy track like Monza, but here at Montemelò, with all these bends it isn’t at its ease." However, he admits that the restoration of the mechanical parts has not yet finished: "It’s very difficult to setup the car, also because after the transfer of property we had a hard work to reset mechanics under racing conditions. There wasn’t time enough to adjust suspensions; neither to set the turbo boost pressure making the most of it". If the car isn’t so easy to bring to its limits, you are certainly satisfied of being the owner of one of the "Moby Dick" four models, the first one constructed by Reinhold Joest. In fact, the German team manager restored a second chassis (935/81 JR002) for John Fitzpatrick, a former British driver who was European GT champion in 1972 and then the winner of the 24 Hours of Daytona in 1976 and the 12 Hours of Sebring in 1980. "In 1980 I went to America to join the Dick Barbour Racing Team". Fitzpatrick himself said to ConnectingRod. –"I ran and won the IMSA championship in the Porsche 935 K3 prepared by Kremer. At the end of the 1980 season Dick Barbour closed his team and I decided to set up a team for myself with a workshop in San Diego, California. From Kremer I bought the 935 K3 Jagermeister of Bob Wollek, and I ran again in the IMSA championship with not so much success, because the new GTP class had been launched and it was difficult to compete against these cars with the K3. Thus in 1982 we decided to buy a K4. "In effect, to allow the GTX cars to compete with the speeder GTP cars, the rules were remarkably liberalized. The 935 cars, which entered the championship, were heavily modified in the frame that now could be fully tubular and in its streamline which every setter developed according to his intuition devouring the last resemblance with the 911 of current production by means of some composite elements. "We wanted to enter the Le Mans race, too" – continued Fitzpatrick – "But the Porsche 956 wasn’t available for customers. The K4 was a car with a high aerodynamic load and therefore not suitable for Le Mans, therefore we decided to buy a new "Moby Dick" from Joest. We had seen the car that Joest had built to give to Moretti for IMSA and believed that it should have been good for Le Mans race. This car had a very streamlined shape and its 2.8 liter engine worked pretty well as for the consumption formula in force at those times. The 3.2 liter engine of K3 and K4 would have used much more fuel. We wanted to stay with Porsche, thus we bought the best thing next the 956". The model built for John Fitzpatrick had the doors according to Norbert Singer’s first design: in fact, the faired doors fully sealed the bodywork between the bonnets. Two generous NACA intakes, obtained from the fairing, let air flow to turbine intercoolers, placed before rear mudguards. That was possible thanks to the new GTX regulation, while the first model constructed by Joest was in agreement with the CSI regulation under Group 5 rules. John Fitzpatrick wasn’t wrong: he wanted to stay with the official Porsche cars, and, in fact, mated with expert David Hobbs, finished fourth at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, winning in the GTX IMSA category, behind the 956 cars driven by Ickx-Bell, Mass-Schuppan and Haywood-Holbert-Barth. After the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the car still ran a couple of races in Germany, with David Hobbs at Norisring and with same Fitzpatrick at Hockenheim. In November 1982 the "Moby Dick" reappeared at the 9 Hours of Kyalami, in South Africa, where the English driver shared his car with Desirée Wilson. The car didn’t cross the finishing line in any of the three races. To face competition again "Moby Dick" had to go to America and make its debut in the IMSA championship: at the 3 Hours of Daytona, the final race of the 1982 championship, the car was the first on the grid and arrived second with the crew made by Fitzpatrick/Hobbs, behind the Lola T600 powered Chevrolet of Interscope. On its arrival in the US "Moby Dick" had some changes, among which, in the doors, the Naca inlet closes, substituted by smaller slits placed before the front windshield, in an area of major boost which allowed more air flow to the intercoolers. The solution had been copied by Porsche 935 K4, the car in which Fitzpatrick had shown the highest degree of competition during the 1982 season, taking four wins. In 1983 "Moby Dick" was displayed at the GP of Miami a first time in February, where it finished eighth with Jochen Mass. On the contrary, in April, the car entered the 6 Hours of Riverside, given to an exceptional crew made by Derek Bell and Rolf Stommelen, who qualified the car at the second place, turning out to be very competitive. Unfortunately, in race "Moby Dick" lost its rear wing and Rolf Stommelen could do nothing to control that crazy beast that was tragically shot off the track, taking away the generous life of the driver. "Rolf was a great friend", reminds Fitzpatrick, who won the race on that day at the wheel of the 935 K4 – "and I didn’t want to have the car repaired and raced it again. I kept most of the damaged parts; only last year I sold the wreckage in California and now they are reconstructing the car for historic races." Someone went so far to consider as a "Moby Dick" also the 935L built in 1982 by Andial, the Porsche setter in North America, with Glen Blakely’s supervision. The car fitted with 3.2 litre turbo engine worked out by Andial itself; it had however a lowered chassis in comparison with the others, wider front track and the single moulding tail in fibreglass incorporating the rear window and rear mudguards. Air intakes to the intercoolers were on the upper hedge of the doors, while on the front the twin lights, set on mid-bonnet, integrated the lights already present on the nose. The major point of relationship with the other "Moby Dick" cars was certainly the long-tail shape which was strongly inspired by the streamline created, some time ago, by Norbert Singer for the 935/78.All Holbert and Harald Grohs qualified in that car on the second place in 1982 at the Six Hours of Riverside. Later on, the car was sold to Preston Henn, who, with A.J.Foyt, Bob Wollek and Claude Ballot Lena, brought it to be successful at the 24 Hours of Daytona in 1983, when, after all, it could be already considered more than old fashioned from a conceptual point of view. The car showed a good performance also in the 1984 edition, when always with the same crew it qualified on the second place with A.J. Foyt, Bob Wollek and Derek Bell and third at the 12 Hours of Sebring. However, that class of cars was on the way out. A class of cars that, thanks to the hard work of some private setters, had gone farther than Porsche itself wouldn’t have dreamed of, leaving its mark for many years in the history of Endurance races. To end this journey round the world of Porsches "935/78" and its replicas, we believe that, after all, every racing car is a sort of "Moby Dick", and every driver looks a bit like Ahab, the captain who tries to dominate his monster in a sea of asphalt, the track. Like a real sea also the track lives on its mood and mysteries. As fans we are like the Pequod crew, unruly, passionate and emotional, but tied indissolubly to the fight between his captain and the White Sea monster.

Stefano Costantino

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History

We are grateful to Yvan Mahe for his permission to take the photograph of his fantastic car and tell us the memories of his glorious past time, and John Fitzpatrick for his precious time devoted to answer our questions.

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