Sunoco Porsche 917-30

Can-Am racing was basically McLaren’s game in the late sixties/early nineteen-seventies.

In Europe, Porsche’s successful 917 was regulated out of competition for 1972, so their attention turned to the highly popular and lucrative Can-Am series as a way of repurposing the 917 in the North American market.

For 1972, the 917-10 was developed, featuring a completely new Spyder body. Roger Penske’s Team Penske ran the team with primary driver Mark Donohue.

Early in the season, Donohue was side-lined for most the season in a testing accident, so George Follmer was recruited to take his place. Follmer dominated the season by taking five wins out of nine races.

For 1973, Team Penske was given carte-blanche by Porsche to modify and improve the 917-10. Penske and Donohue revised the aerodynamics, lengthened the wheelbase and tweaked the engine, bringing the power up to a monstrous 1580 horsepower!


Mark Donohue racing the 917-30 at Watkins Glen
Acrylic on 100cm X 50cm (39.4"x 19.7") canvas 
© Paul Chenard 2016
Original art available, as are limited editions.

The new car was designated the 917-30, and was presented in lovely Sunoco yellow and blue sponsorship colours.

Marc Donohue won six out of the season’s eight races in the new racer and took the 1973 Can-Am Championship for Team Penske.

New rules for the 1974 season basically outlawed the 917-30, but it still stirs the blood of those lucky enough to see it in action at the vintage racing meets.

1971 ADAC 1000km Nürburgring

The Nürburgring 1000 km race (now called the 6 Hours of Nürburgring) started in 1953.

Through the beginning history of the race, Maserati and Aston Martin featured strongly, with a switch to Ferrari in the early 1960’s, then to Porsche in the later part of that decade.

For the 1971 edition, Porsche had an extremely strong presence there, with a least 9 models represented – 917K, 910, 908/03 & /02, 907, 906, 911T & S, 914/6 – a real armada!

https://youtu.be/C-fj-OP_p7c

The only cars providing a real challenge to the Porsches were the Ferrari’s (models 512M & S, 312PB, Dino 246GT) and the Alfa Romeo’s (models T33/3 & /2, GTA).



The S.p.A. Ferrari SEFAC 312PB of Jacky Ickx/Clay Regazzoni took the pole grid post, followed by the Autodelta S.p.A. Alfa Romeo T33/3 of Rolf Stommelen/Nanni Galli and the International Martini Racing Team Porsche 908/3 of Vic Elford/Gérard Larrousse.


Acrylic on 12”x 10” (30.48cm x 25.4cm) canvas
© Paul Chenard 2015 – Original painting available.

Elford quickly took an early lead and, together with Larrousse, won the race, followed by the 908/3’s of Pedro Rodroguez/Jo Siffert and of Gijs van Lennep/Helmut Marko.

A very Porsche clean sweep … they took 7 of the top 10 places!

Porsche 911 Carrera RSR

There were enough hints of the competition potential of the Porsche 911. Vic Elford had proven it by winning the 1968 Rallye de Monte Carlo in a Porsche 911T.

Vic Elford, supported by David Stone, 1968 Rallye Monte-Carlo.

More and more privateer racers were choosing the 911 as their weapon of choice for racing and Porsche was taking notice. They started developing more sporting versions such as the 911 RS, and were met with more successes.

 For 1973, they decided to use the knowledge acquired building their race cars and apply it to the 911.


Swiss race driver Herbert Müller, teamed up with Gijs van Lennep, won the 1973 Targa Florio driving a Porsche 911 Carrera RSR.

The result was the 911 Carrera RSR, which was met with great success in its first year.


1973 24 Hours of Daytona-winning Brumos Porsche 911 Carrera RSR of Peter Gregg and Hurley Haywood.

The RSR came in 4th overall at the 24 heures du Mans, and was 1st overall in the 12 Hours of Sebring, the Targa Florio and the 24 Hours of Daytona!

The huge success of the Carrera RSR pointed the way for Porsche, and lead to the development of the RSR Turbo, the 934, and the 935, all in turn successful racers.

911@50 – Porsche Carrera RSR Turbo

Porsche’s development of their sports racing cars through the 1960’s took leaps and bounds, bring serious challenges to both Ford and Ferrari on the track.

Ford dropped out of the battle once they proved their point at Le Mans, and Porsche was very ready to take up the battle.

As they developed their racing technologies, they looked into ways they could be adapted to the competition versions of the 911.

With the great success of their Porsche Carrera RSR in 1973, they saw that the next logical step was to turbo-charge it.



Prismacolor pencils and Varsol on gray archival stock
19"x 16" (48.3cm x 40.6cm) © Paul Chenard 2013

Born from this approach, the 1974 Carrera RSR Turbo was a formidable monster. Turbo-charging made it powerful, but turbo-lag made it scary.

Drivers like Herbert Müller and Gijs van Lennep managed to tame it and it achieved measured success, but it became a major development tool to Porsche’s successful 934 and it’s all-conquering 935.

911@50 – Porsche Carrera RSR

After the relative success of the Porsche 911 in competition, Porsche saw opportunity to bring it into higher levels of racing.

Starting with the 911S, the technicians developed a lightened car, and focused on increasing the capacity of the flat-six engine.

Out of these developments came the non-turbocharged Carrera RSR 2.8 created to compete in the 1973 GT Championship.

Right out of the box, the car showed huge potential, winning the 1973 Daytona 24 Hours at the hands of Peter Gregg and Hurley Haywood.

This was followed up by a win of the 12 Hours of Sebring, driven again by Gregg and Haywood, joined also by Dave Helmick.



Pen&ink and markers on gray archival stock
© Paul Chenard

It famously won the last official Targa Florio, driven by Herbert Müller and Gijs van Lennep.

With the record of important wins and high placings of the Carrera RSR, Porsche took the GT Championship.

911@50 – “Quick Vic” and the Porsche 911

Victor Henry Elford started rally racing in the early 1960’s, slowly gaining experience and success.

In 1963, Porsche introduced the Ferdinand “Bitzi” Porsche–designed 911 as a refined replacement to their 356.

In early 1967, Vic Elford met with Porsche racing team manager Baron Fritz Huschke von Hanstein and convinced him of the competition potential of the 911 in rally racing.

Elford was right and successfully took the 1967 European Rally Championship in the works 911.


Pen&ink and markers on archival watercolour paper
12"x 18" (30.5cm X 45.7cm)© Paul Chenard 2013

 In 1968, he took a Porsche 911T, along with navigator David Stone, to a very popular win of the grueling Rally Monte Carlo.

It was the only the beginning of legendary competition success of the many storied Porsche 911, which this year, celebrates it’s 50th anniversary.

Alles Gute zum Geburtstag!

Porsche in Formula 1

When someone thinks of Formula 1, the Porsche name does not necessarily come to mind. That wasn’t always the case though.

In the late 1950’s, Porsche was finding success in the sports car and GT classes of racing, sometimes beating out the much more powerful teams. That was the case for the 1956 Targa Florio where the Porsche 550 of Umberto Maglioli and Huschke von Hanstein won the Sicilian race against the Maseratis and Ferraris.

In the late 1950’s, Porsche decided to try their hand in the 1500cc class F2 races with the Porsche 718. In 1961, the former F2 class became Formula 1, so Porsche went F1 racing with the 718.

It’s 1957 design showed itself as outdated, so Porsche produce a new car, the 804, for 1962.

Porsche 804 Formula 1, rear view, 1962
Pen&ink, paint markers and markers on gray archival paper
17"x 12" © Paul Chenard 2012
This original artwork is available, as are limited editions

American Dan Gurney brought Porsche their first and only Formula 1 win as a constructor, taking the French Grand Prix at at Rouen-Les-Essarts on July 8th. Gurney also finished 3rd at the German Grand Prix at the Nürburgring on August 5th.

With the upcoming Formula 1 rule changes, Porsche decided to withdraw from Grand Prix racing in 1964 to focus on sports and endurance racing.

In 1983, Porsche returned to Formula 1 as an engine developer through TAG for McLaren and helped them win the 1984 and 1985 Constructors Championships.

James Dean and his Porsche 550 Spyder

James Byron Dean was born on February 8th, 1931 in Marion, Indiana.

He is known mostly for the brilliance of his acting in his only 3 feature movies: East of Eden, Rebel Without a Cause, and Giant. He received two posthumous Best Actor Academy Award nominations, for East of Eden and Giant.

He is less well known for his automobile racing activities. In 1953, he started with a race-prepared MG TD, then trading up to a Porsche 356 in 1954.

He showed some skill on the track, so he again traded up to a Porsche 550 Spyder. He had actually ordered a Lotus X for his racing activities, but its delivery was delayed so Dean settled on the Spyder.

His language coach for the movie Giant, Bill Hickman, called him “Little Bastard”, so Dean had that painted in script on the back of the Porsche by legendary pin-striper Dean Jeffries.

On the morning of September 30, 1955, Dean and his mechanic Rolf Wütherich set off from Competition Motors in Los Angeles to go to a sports car race in Salinas, California.

On their way there, a 1950 Ford Custom Tudor coupe, driven by 23-year-old Donald Turnupseed, took a fork in the road, his left turn bringing him head-on into the path of Dean’s Porsche.

Wütherich survived the crash, but Dean was not as lucky and died about 10 minutes afterward.

Interestingly, he was quoted as saying, "People say racing is dangerous. But I'd rather take my chances on the track any day than on the highway."

Sadly, he was right.


Artwork
For the past little while, I've wanted to do a piece on James Dean and his 550, so finally I got around to it. I call it "Immortality", and it's done in mixed media.

The background is acrylic on 70 year-old unused canvas board (my dad's), Dean and his mechanic are in pen&ink and archival markers on illustration board, on which I also illustrated the wheels in Prismacolor pencils.

The Porsche 550 Spyder is on 18-gauge sheet aluminum, which I engraved, sanded, painted on with oil model paint and pen&ink, cut out, filed and sanded, and finished in gloss varnished. The Porsche is about a 1/4" off the canvas ...

The size of the piece is 16"x 12" (40.6cm x 30.5cm), unframed.
It's framed in a black floating frame ...
I included part of a quote of his that I found appropriate for this.

This piece is is available for sale; please contact me at paul.chenard@hotmail.com  if you are interested.

Les 24 heures du Mans 2011

The 24 heures du Mans is coming up this weekend, at the same time as Grand Prix du Canada. Talk about over-stimulation!

The 24 Heures du Mans race is the world’s oldest sports car race, with the first race being held in 1923.


The race is organized by the Automobile Club de l’Ouest and it is run on the Circuit de Sarthe, about 2.5 hours south-west of Paris.


On the world stage, the race equals in stature to the Grand Prix de Monaco in the Formula 1, and the Indianapolis 500 in Indy car.


There have been cycles of consecutive winners starting with Bentley in the late 1920’s, followed by Alfa Romeo through the 1930’s, and two Bugatti wins late in the decade.


 The war years stopped the race until 1949, with the advent of Ferrari’s first win there. There was mostly Jaguar dominance through the mid-1950’s. Ferrari came back with a vengeance, winning six years in a row, 1960 through to 1965.


At this point, we were well into the Ford/Ferrari war, with Ford taking the next four years. Please read A. J. Baimes’ great book “Go like Hell” to get fabulous insight on the battles.





1970 heralded the Porsche years at Le Mans, with sixteen wins until 1998. These were interspersed with wins by Jaguar, Mercedes, Mazda, Peugeot, Dauer, McLaren, and BMW.


Since 2000, we have been in the Audi years, with the exception of Bentley (2003) and Peugeot (2009).


Aston Martin has returned “en force”, so this year is looking like a three-way battle between them, Audi and Peugeot.


Le Mans has never been so exciting!

Bonne fête, monsieur Gurney!

An American racing icon celebrates a birthday; Dan Gurney is 80 years young today.

Born in Port Jefferson, New York, he moved to California as a teenager.

He became a successful racer, winning his first Formula 1 race at the French Grand 1962 driving a Porsche 804; it was also Porsche's first F1 win.

Not satisfied to be just a racer, he was instrumental in getting Colin Chapman to bring his Lotus’ to the Indianapolis 500, finally leading to their win with Jim Clark in 1965.


1967 was a big year for Americans in motor sport, and someone who was at the forefront of it was Dan Gurney.

He won, along with A. J. Foyt, the 24 Heures du Mans in a GT40 Mark IV and remains the only American to win a Formula 1 race in a car of his own construction at Spa in Belgium, racing his Eagle Weslake T1G. At his Le Mans win, Gurney introduced the tradition of spraying Champagne, which has carried from that point on.

In his career, he won races in Nascar, Can-Am, Trans-Am and Indy. Later on, as a team owner/manufacturer, his cars would also win the Indy 500, and the IMSA GTP series.

He is current writing his biography, which we are all looking forward to. There will certainly be some Champagne spraying when that is published!

Porsche Rally 2010

This past Sunday, I was invited to take part in the annual rally organized by Porsche of Halifax.

It was another well-prepared and well-attended event, featuring Boxsters, Caymans, Cayennes, Turbos, Carrera 4Ss, Carreras, and the Panamera, about 25 Porsches in all.

We all gathered at Point Pleasant Park, and after a short rally briefing, we were on our way out of town towards the Annapolis Valley. To get there, we took the more interesting and curvy Highway No.1, a perfect road for the Porsches. I was navigating in a very sweet dark blue Carrera 4S Cabriolet ...

We made a pit stop in picturesque Wolfville, continuing on through Port Williams to the famous Look-Off. The normally stunning view was hindered by fog, but it is still a great place to stop and stretch.

Starting off again, we snaked our way west, downwards towards the coast, our final destination being Halls Harbour.

The event wrapped up in the picturesque little lobster village, where you can witness the famous Bay of Fundy tides, the highest in the world.

After a tour of the lobster pound, our lunch was booked in at the Hall's Harbour Lobster Pound Restaurant. We had a wonderful meal there, and we had time to meet new faces and chat.

I have to thank organizer and MC Steve Archibald for inviting me to such a fun and well-organized rally and his team, Kathy, Mary-Jane, Jeff, Chris and Kendall for looking after everything, with special thanks to Chris and Kendall for getting me there and back in such class.

All photos © Paul Chenard 2010

50 years of Porsche Legacy at Sebring

This weekend celebrates the 50^th anniversary of Porsche’s first victory at the 12 Hrs of Sebring.

Porsche RS60 - Sebring 1960
Prismacolor on Strathmore gray archival paper 9"x 4"
© Paul Chenard 2008
Philip Powell Collection

A Porsche RS60, masterfully driven by Olivier Gendebien and Hans Hermann, took that win in 1960.

This wonderful video is produced by videographer J.F Musial; it touches beautifully on the past and the present of Porsche at Sebring.

Bravo!

Pedro and Ricardo Rodriguez – Mexican Racing Heroes

It’s a somewhat quieter time in the Summer, and this also applies to buying (or selling) stuff on Ebay.
I was searching for racing history items, when I came across two original art pieces. With no one bidding, they were easy to pick up.

They are wonderful portraits of the Mexican racing Rodriguez brothers, Ricardo and Pedro, rendered by Mexican artist Rodolfo Federico Antonio Fraga.

The 10” x 15” artworks are beautiful likenesses of the brothers, who are still very much revered in their home country.
Sadly, Ricardo was killed racing a Ferrari 156 in the 1962 Mexican Grand Prix, and Pedro was killed racing a Ferrari 512M at the Norisring in Nuremburg, Germany.

Though Ricardo died very young, Pedro continued, racing in Formula 1 (winning 2 races) and raced the World Championship of Makes, becoming a two-time World Champion (1970, 1971) at the wheel of a Wyer-Gulf-Porsche Porsche 917.

Porsche Of Halifax 2009 Rally

On May 24th, I had the pleasure of playing navigator for my friend Gordon’s beautiful raspberry 2008 Boxster on a Porsche Rally organized by Porsche of Halifax.

It was a well-prepared and well-attended event, featuring Boxsters, Caymans, Cayennes, 911 Turbos, Carrera 4Ss and Carreras, 21 Porsches in all. Even with the cool wind, and the spotty rain, it was still a fun event.

Each driver/navigator was given a list of directions, quiz questions, and route maps to help them along. The route started at the base of historic Point Pleasant Park in Halifax, snaked it’s way through the historic downtown, then across the Harbour through to Eastern Passage, up along the coast, past Lawrencetown Beach to finish at Porter’s Lake Provincial Park & Campground.

At key points along the whole route, we had questions to answer on the sheets, relating to your knowledge of Nova Scotia, past and present. The most right answers were rewarded with a beautiful Porsche 911 watch. Gord is a good, enthusiastic driver, so it was fun to ride shotgun with him.

Once arrived at Porters Lake, we were treated to a beautiful buffet lunch provided by the well-known and respected caterer Scanway. It was delicious!








I met someone really wonderful people, and had lots of fun. My hat goes off to Steve Archibald of Porsche of Halifax and his great team for pulling off a successful event.

I hope there will be more like it!