Porsche Racing Cars: 2006 to 2023
by Brian Long
“Porsche officially took a break from motorsport at the end of 1998, but the brand was very well represented in all manner of racing, including more new series in the States to make up for IMSA’s failure. Apart from various updates to the 911 line, things were then fairly quiet for a while until, in April 2005. Hartmut Kristen (Porsche’s new competitions boss), unveiled the long-awaited RS Spyder . . .”
And that’s why this book begins the year after the hiatus was over. Well, also because the last installment of this 3-part series ended with the 2005 season. That book had come out in 2008 and by now people have probably given up hope that Long would return to the subject. He’s been plenty busy in he meantime, to be sure, which gives a remark he’s made in the intro to all three books a sort of hollow ring, namely that he has wanted to do these books “for a very long time—a couple of decades, in fact.” With that sort of motivation, the only reason to explain this long gap after Vol 2 is that Long was waiting for enough racing seasons to pass to have material on which to base a new book of comparable scope.
1953–1975 / 1976–2005 / 2006–2023.
That decade-and-a-half gap actually prompts an interesting observation about how the world has changed since: while the dollar price has increased by only a nickel (5 cents to you furriners), the £ price has jumped from £55 to £75! All three volumes are still in print.
Another thing encroaching on the awareness of the longtime book collector is that when Vols 1 and 2 came out in 2008, Anthony Pritchard had just published his very similar book, Porsche: The Sports Racing Cars 1953–72, a bit earlier. Now, Vol. 3 comes out just when Randy Leffingwell’s Against All the Others: Porsche’s Racing History is making a splash. Projected to run to 14 volumes, of which the first one has recently been published and the second is about to, there will be something for every level of interest, budget, and shelf space. Happy days, then. Just to be clear, all these books go about their business differently so there is no apples-to-apples comparison to be had. Which is a polite way of saying you’ll want them all.
Typical page layouts. Everything has its place and works—not at all easy when you design the first volume and create a template that still has to work lo these many years later.
The drivers’ names in the tables are included in the Index listings.
In keeping with the previous books in this series, Long divides the new one into racing seasons, describing cars (both works and customer), people, competitions, and technical and developmental issues. The narrative is structured around the events, with the cars’ construction and performance details interspersed (also in many cases prices for both cars and performance kits and the like, a pretty interesting data point not normally accessible to civilians).
The first chapter is setting the scene, and is in fact titled just so, but 15 pages can cover only so much ground between the 1930s (Auto Union GP cars) and 2006. Still, the key points are here, so even someone starting their Porsche motorsports exploration with this book is not entirely left without context.
Almost all the images are supplied by Porsche. Technical illustrations are sparse.
Long is a seasoned author and has written much on Porsche (and also is a trained mechanical engineer and 911 owner) so he is a competent guide. The book had Porsche’s co-operation which specifically means access to their archive and guidance from its keepers. As ever, one can only express surprise that they still manage to minimize duplication of imagery; Long writes they sourced “some real rarities” for him. His books are always strong on including brochures, posters, and ephemera. The modern era is of course marked by big-name global motorsports series rather than local events so expect to find the focus being on events on the level of Le Mans, ALMS, Cup, Grand-Am, WEC, TUSC, IMSA etc. A handy 2-page sidebar describes series and formulae. Results tables present the top 3 finishers (irrespective of marque) as well as those lower-placed finishers that drove Porsches, all by position, driver name/s, make/model, no. of laps.
A very welcome departure from the previous books is that the type in the Index is finally large enough to be easily legible.
There is at present no other book that is this current.
Copyright 2024, Sabu Advani (speedreaders.info).
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