Porter Press has just released a new book detailing the full career history of the most successful Porsche 962 – chassis 011.
While the 962 and 962C won twice at Le Mans and over 50 times in IMSA races in America, also winning races and titles in Germany and Japan, chassis 962 011 – the car featured in this book – was the most successful of the 19 works Porsche 962s built.
Porsche sports car specialist, Serge Vanbockryck, has created an authoritative book telling 011’s entire story, embracing 46 races and 9 victories during a five-year career that saw it compete at the sharp end in Europe, America and Japan.
About Porsche 962-011
As well as winning the 1989 ADAC Supercup in the hands of Bob Wollek, 962 011 scored the Porsche 956/962 series’ 39th and final world championship race victory, beating the dominant Sauber-Mercedes at Dijon. It then spent four more seasons criss-crossing the Atlantic between 1990–93, to race in the IMSA Championship in America and the Interserie in Europe.
All of 962 011’s racing exploits are explained in detail and its drivers receive in-depth profiles, including Bob Wollek, Henri Pescarolo, Hurley Haywood, Jean-Louis Ricci, Danny Sullivan, Gianpiero Moretti, Manuel Reuter, Bernd Schneider, John Paul Jr and Chip Robinson. The full history of 011 is outlined in exhaustive technical detail, recording every test and every race with all available data, from fuel consumption figures to pitstop times.
About the author
Serge Vanbockryck has been studying and documenting the racing and test data of the 200+ Porsche 956s and 962s, their derivatives and their immediate successors since the late 1980s, making him perhaps the world’s foremost historian on the subject. This lifelong passion has included dozens of interviews with Porsche decision-makers, engineers, managers and drivers, and countless hours researching every conceivable period document at Porsche’s corporate archives in Stuttgart.
Decades of deep diving has previously produced three other acclaimed publications from Porter Press International: Ultimate Works Porsche 956 – The Definitive History (2019, two volumes) and Ultimate Works Porsche 962 – The Definitive History (2022, three volumes). The 962 book earned Serge the Motorworld Buchpreis 2023 in Germany. A previous ‘Great Cars’ book, TWR-Porsche WSC95 – The Autobiography of WSC001 was awarded the Ehrenpreis of the Motorworld Buchpreis in 2024
News from my Impact Bumpers Porsche forum says that Lidl is offering Revell’s 1:24 scale models of the Martini Porsche 934 and 911 3.2 Carrera Coupe for just under £20 in-store – nice Christmas presents for kids of all ages.
The Carrera kit in particular looks quite detailed. Some of the IB kids are currently remaking their own cars in 1:24th scale.
I drink mostly 0% alcohol these days other than a drop of Irish whiskey and the occasional bottle of wine with my daughters. As you’d expect, there isn’t much 0% in the Jägermeister catalogue, but I note that it now makes Jägermeister Cold Brew Coffee.
I tried Guinness Cold Brew Coffee last Christmas and my nervous system is still recovering – it is absolutely savage. Definitely drink cold brew responsibly. I might order the Orange 934. That looks like a no brainer, even stone cold sober.
Porsche has shared pictures of its new 911 Hybrid (992.2) being tested in the sands of Dubai and at the Nürburgring, where it took almost 9 seconds off the lap time of what I guess may be the 992.1 Carrera. That sounds pretty impressive – I wonder what the cost per second will work out to when the list price is revealed.
Porsche Hybrid Nürburgring Test
Over the course of performance testing, Porsche brand ambassador Jörg Bergmeister completed a lap of the circuit in 7:16.934 minutes – 8.7 seconds faster than the corresponding version of the predecessor model. The test car was equipped with standard road tyres, plus the aero kit with a fixed rear wing that has been available as an option for several model generations now, and which provides increased downforce at high speeds.
“The new 911 has become considerably faster on the track,” says Bergmeister. “We have more grip, significantly more power, and the spontaneous response of the performance hybrid is a great advantage.”
Porsche 911 Hybrid Techical Specification
The obvious question is what sort of system is Porsche using in the 911 Hybrid but there is little detail about this in Porsche press land. Writing for Car and Driver this year, the well connected journalist Georg Kacher said that the lightweight c.27-kilo system would likely be Rimac designed (the EV company that Porsche has a 45% stake in) and feature a 400v electrical system with an integrated starter-generator, an 80-90hp electric motor driving the front wheels and a 2kWh battery recharged by the engine and regenerative braking. We will have to wait and see what the system actually looks like in practice.
When is a Hybrid not a Hybrid
A recent trip to Brescia in Italy to inspect an old 911 race car saw me renting my third Fiat Panda/500 hybrid in Italy in under 12 months (see above). Badged as a Hybrid, the car basically has a bigger alternator and a miniscule battery that cannot drive the car but helps the stop-start work recharge quicker. It makes the cars eligible for low emission/ZTL zones in the old towns, and the Panda’s economy was good over 200kms but it is hardly what one would seriously call a hybrid drivetrain. I’m looking forward to seing what Porsche’s first part-electric 911 looks like.
Five Million Kilometres of Testing
“We left nothing to chance during development and tested the new 911 under all sorts of conditions all over the world,” said Frank Moser, Vice President Model Line 911 and 718. “From the freezing cold to scorching heat, as was the case during the final stages of testing in Dubai. Whether at a high drivetrain load in the demanding conditions of mountain passes or in the stop-and-go traffic of an urban environment, the new 911 has mastered even the most difficult challenges with aplomb. All in all, our engineers and test drivers clocked up more than five million kilometres of development driving.”
Hybrid drivetrains are leading the way in the transition from oil to electric. Auto Trader recently announced that one in five used cars next year would be an EV and the market is taking its time to adopt them for various reasons including higher purchase price, perceived safety concerns, practicality of longer range driving and long term reliability and maintenance costs. Leading with the 911 hybrid drivetrain rather an introducing a full EV version obviously makes the most sense, but the idea of a full EV 911 with lightweight batteries and what that might do for Nurburgring lap times is also an enticing prospect. We might expect that in the 2030 998, says Kacher.
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Ferdinand Magazine is the personal blog of John Glynn, a writer, classic car and motorcycle valuations expert and court expert witness. To explore and enjoy more of my work, and to support the Ferdinand Porsche blog, you can:
Porsche has announced that four-time F1 champion, Sebastian Vettel, will test the Porsche 963 hypercar as part of a 36-hour test for Porsche Penske Motorsport ahead of the 2024 Le Mans 24 Hours.
The 36 year-old from Heppenheim, which is about 90 miles north-west of Stuttgart, has prepared for the test by meeting the team at its Mannheim base on March 14th and doing some miles on the sim the following day. Yesterday was his first real-life run in the physical car on track at Weissach – one of few times he has driven a race car with a roof.
Vettel excited ahead of the test
“I’m looking forward to testing the Porsche 963,” said Sebastian. “I’ve always followed other racing series and my curiosity for endurance events encouraged me to just give it a shot. I already got the chance to get a feel for the car during a rollout in Weissach, and I’m excited about the long run in Aragón.
“I’m looking forward to my time behind the wheel. It’ll definitely take an adjustment and some getting used to but everyone in the team is very open and helps me. This will be a new experience for me. We will then see what happens next in this respect – at the moment there are no further plans for the future.”
Alongside Sebastian for the test at the 3.3-mile Aragón circuit in north east Spain will be works drivers Matt Campbell, Michael Christensen, Fred Makowiecki, Kévin Estre, André Lotterer and Laurens Vanthoor. The endurance test serves as preparation for the highlight of the season in Le Mans on 15/16 June. As the record holder, Porsche aims to secure its 20th outright victory at the Circuit des 24 Heures.
Porsche has had good fortune putting successful F1 drivers including Mark Webber and Nico Hulkenberg in its cars, but no Germans of late (not that there are many to choose from – although German-born Lotterrer did have a run out with Caterham in 2014), so a tie up with Vettel is excellent news. It is exciting on many levels, not least of which is the return of a potentially competitive Sebastian against his somewhat subdued F1 exit following two years with the Aston Martin Grand Prix team, now newly reinvigorated with Fernando Alonso on board.
It’s funny that, at 35, Vettel was seen as an elder in F1 where he eventually gained a reputation for being particularly empathetic towards young drivers, encouraging the highly competitive driver field to embody their emotions more deeply. “You cannot always be the best. But you can do your best,” as Vettel puts it.
I like the idea of this new-Seb personality integrated with some Porsche brand communications; the concept has a potential softness and emotionally considerate tone that I often think carmakers lack. I hope they take advantage of his genuine and caring nature as well as reawakening our awareness of his speed – that could lead to some very exciting storytelling and hopefully some race-winning history too.
Vettel is famously an avid historian and loves racing history, with a car collection including Mansell’s 1992 Williams FW14B F1 car, which he runs on sustainable fuel. Thoughts of former Porsche F1 pilots including Hans Herrmann, Edgar Barth and other drivers of that calibre are not far away today. We live in exciting times.
Inimitable graphic artist and illustrator Guy Allen has just released another great series of classic car prints. Titled Kinetic, Part 1 is a four-car series featuring the 1973 911 Carrera RS, Jaguar E-Type, Lamborghini Miura and BMW CSL.
I have been captivated by Guy’s work for over 15 years, ever since seeing his first Felix Petrol cartoon. Our freelance paths have intersected many times over the years and he was the obvious choice of collaborator on two series of t-shirts and prints we produced for my Impact Bumpers Porsche forum in the late 2000s.
Guy has the knack of picking up on an idea and quickly understanding the basic dynamic concept, but then taking it further in exciting and engaging ways that one has not imagined. Some of his finest work involves the 911 and I have many of his prints in my small collection.
The latest print in my collection features the Carrera RS. This classic design blending so much Porsche iconography – including the Carerra side stripe, ducktail spoiler and Fuchs alloy wheel – must be one of the most illustrated 911s ever, but Guy again manages to bring something new to the legend. A hat tip also for resisting the urge to widen the wheels and tyres and lose the knife-edge nature of those early ’70s 911s, balletically balanced on the tiptoe of the tyres as they chase driving nirvana. It is no surprise that his artistry is often commissioned by Porsche itself.
Guy Allen development sketches for Kinetic
If you have not got some of Guy’s work, I encourage you to start with the Kinetic Carrera RS. The print is limited to 100 signed and numbered examples and his Porsche works tend to sell out pretty quickly. Printed on archive quality paper using pigment inks, the large A3 work ships unframed and worldwide shipping is free.
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