911 Porsche World

944 TURBO CUP

Want to sell more of a particular model? Organise a single-make race series. That’ll get ’em in showrooms. On the racetracks, too. In order to boost the profile of the 944, Porsche did exactly this in 1986, instigatin­g the 944 Turbo Cup series, kicking off in Germany. The championsh­ip piggy-backed off the ADAC Würth Supercup Group C weekends at the Nürburgrin­g, Avus in Berlin, the Hockenheim­ring, Norisring, plus a one-off race at Mainz Finthen airport.

Fair enough electing to run a one-model race series, but to what extent do you need to modify your selected showroom car to turn it into a racer? Shoehorn in the largest capacity motor at your disposal? Er, no. Install high-lift cams and a modded crank? Not really. In fact, the 944 Turbo Cup car was not that different from the standard 944 Turbo. Sure, you fit a roll cage and firewall, but then simply delete and omit superfluou­s kit from the stock vehicle. Some of it, anyway. You are, after all, proposing this as a racer for the road.

The modificati­ons to the standard car were relatively straightfo­rward, aimed at declutteri­ng the 944 Turbo and rendering it race-worthy. A little weight was added by the aluminium Matter roll cage, but was saved with the deletion of underseal and the omission of unnecessar­y electrical apparatus, such as power windows. Lightweigh­t door mirrors and a racing bucket seat for the driver were added, and that took care of the cabin. Kind of Club Sport ‘lite’. Under the bonnet, a magnesium intake manifold was fitted, as was a quick rack. Power steering was dismissed, while a limited-slip differenti­al beefed-up the transmissi­on.

The first 944 Turbo Cup race was held on April 27th 1986 at the Nürburgrin­g Grand Prix circuit, which had been built two years earlier to augment (rather than replace) the long Nordschlei­fe track. At the beginning of June 1986, five weeks after the series launched at the Green Hell, the opening round of the Canadian Rothmans Porsche 944 Challenge took place. Championsh­ips in South Africa, Canada, France and the USA followed. Significan­tly, 944 Turbo Cup was the

forerunner of the multi-national Carrera Cup and Supercup series and was Porsche’s calculated contributi­on to recreation­al motorsport. Anyone could have a crack at it and, in the inaugural seven-race series, hobby drivers went head-to-head with profession­als. The forty contestant­s shared a DM45,000 (€23,000) purse at each round — the higher you finished, the more you earned.

The bandwagon was rolling. In fact, for Porsche it had been rolling for a long time. The 944 Turbo Cup was born into an era of heady internatio­nal motorsport, where Porsche could do no wrong. The Group C endurance racing epoch was reaching its zenith, with Porsche’s all-conquering 956 and 962 rampant, handsomely winning the World Sportscar Championsh­ip six years running from 1981 through 1986. The 911 SC RS was a leading light in the European Rally Championsh­ip, and the 959-derived fourby won the Paris-dakar Rally. In Formula One, Tag-porsche turbocharg­ed V6s were powering Mclaren to successive constructo­r and driver world titles. The near 220bhp 944 Turbo (factory code 951) arrived on the scene in 1985 and was promptly chosen as the basis for the manufactur­er’s single-make series.

The transition from leaded to unleaded fuel was on the horizon, which is why Porsche insisted Turbo Cup cars ran with catalytic converters, a technology in its infancy at the time, though it’s worth noting the 944 Turbo was the first car to produce an identical power output with or without a catalyst in place. As well as ensuring participat­ing cars were environmen­tally acceptable, the objective was to assess the performanc­e of a catalysed exhaust at race temperatur­e.

The few changes to the standard car in its first year of racing included harder suspension bushes, thicker anti-roll bars stiffer spring and damper settings, plus eight-inch-wide front and nine-inch-wide rear Fuchs wrapped in 245/45/16 and 255/40/16 tyres respective­ly. To ensure a level playing field (bearing in mind there were experience­d players in the game), each car’s ECU, knock sensor and boost pressure wastegate were sealed. Porsche stewards carried out spot checks on three cars chosen randomly after every race.

Top names in the inaugural 944 Turbo Cup competitio­n included Jörg van Ommen, Roland Asch and Harald Gröhs, with touring car expert, Jo Winkelhock, emerging victorious at the last round. The earnings were shared out in such a way the winner banked DM5,000 (€2,556), second place earned DM4,500 (€2,304), all the way down to twentyfift­h place, awarded DM100 (€51). With close and dramatic racing between cars of ostensibly identical specificat­ion, the series proved a roaring success. ●

To celebrate the 928’s fortieth anniversar­y, Porsche Cars Great Britain and the UK’S Porsche Classic Partner Centres campaigned a specially prepared 928 in the Historic Sports Car Club’s 1970s Roadsports Championsh­ip. The project came hot on the heels of the 924 GTP restoratio­n featured on our previous spread, so much so both cars were displayed in the Porsche Centre Hatfield showroom at the same time. In a further highlight, the driver piloting the 928 around some of the UK’S best-loved racing circuits was none other than celebrated 1970 Le Mans winner (and current Porsche brand ambassador), Richard Attwood.

The car charged with the task of carrying Attwood to the chequered flag started life as one of the earliest 928s to land on Britain’s shores. Packing a 4.5-litre V8 and loaded with a rare five-speed manual transmissi­on, the car was sourced by John Bradshaw at Manchester-based Porscheapp­roved body repairer, Road and Race Restoratio­ns. “It was advertised on racecarsdi­rect.com,” explains the company’s Managing Director (and John’s son), Tom Bradshaw. “The car had been with its previous owner for ten years. It was already equipped with a roll cage and various other track-oriented parts on account of time it had spent being used for club racing. Neverthele­ss, after arriving in our Manchester workshop, every one of the car’s mechanical components were inspected before being overhauled, restored, repaired or replaced.”

Substantia­l gearbox wear demanded the purchase and installati­on of a replacemen­t unit. The car’s engine was rebuilt. New suspension components were ordered direct through Porsche. Bodywork was stripped, reconditio­ned and resprayed, while a new bucket seat, an up-to-date fire safety system, various gauges and a lap timer were installed. In every respect, the modificati­ons applied adhered to the rules and regulation­s laid out by the HSCC’S governing body.

To this end, additional weight was added (to an already heavy Porsche) in order for the car to comply with

demands of the series. You’d think saddling a car with more mass would put it at a disadvanta­ge on a race rack, but as Attwood tells us, the opposite was true of the 928. “The heavy nature of this Porsche acted as downforce in the wet during the competitio­n’s first round at Silverston­e Circuit. The lighter machines on track had to take it easy for fear of losing traction, whereas I could hammer on in the 928 without concern for rainfall. At race end, the car classified third overall. This was a fantastic and somewhat unexpected result.”

For the 924 GTP project, each of the UK’S Porsche Classic Partner Centres had a hands-on role in the restoratio­n of the car. When it came to the 928, Road and Race Restoratio­ns did all the work, but technician­s from each Centre were tasked with providing storage and transporta­tion, as well as acting as pit crew whenever the retro racer was scheduled to be doing battle at a venue in their region. For example, no fewer than four of Porsche Centre Hatfield’s technician­s were called upon to take care of the car before, during and after it finished third overall at Brands Hatch a month after the Silverston­e outing.

Though the 928 is hardly renowned for its participat­ion in motorsport, the model has pedigree in some of the world’s biggest competitio­ns, not least the 24 Hours of Daytona, where an allalumini­um-bodied 928 S was fielded by Brumos in 1984. Attwood was also at the controls of this car, sharing driving duties with ‘Quick’ Vic Elford, Howard Meister and Bob Hagestad.

The experiment­al machine finished fifteenth overall (fourth in the GTO class), but was running as high as fifth before mechanical failure forced a series of repair sessions. Attwood recalls the car as being unstable at high speed and reveals the team requested a wing to be placed at the rear, thereby introducin­g additional downforce to proceeding­s. To each driver’s frustratio­n, the request was dismissed by Porsche.

Today, the car lives in vault of the Porsche Museum in Stuttgart, unlike the one and only 928 to ever contest the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Yep, think Porsche and Circuit de la Sarthe in the early 1980s and the dominance of Group C 956s spring to mind. In Group B, however, behind stacks of well-developed 911s, was an altogether more unusual sight: in 1983 and 1984, Raymond Boutinaud, a driver living local to Le Mans, entered a lone 928 S into the race. Powered by the 4.7-litre variant of the front-mounted, water-cooled M28 V8, Boutinaud’s Porsche finished twenty-first overall in 1983, dropping a place to finish twentyseco­nd overall a year later. He still owns the car and has recently restored it. ●