AUTOMOBILSPORT #01 (01/2014) Porsche at Le Mans – English edition

With Porsche’s first works entry after 16 years, it is time to look ahead, but also to review the glorious past. That’s the main aim of this special edition, which also represents the No.1-issue of our new magazine AUTOMOBILSPORT. This magazine pursues the spiritual philosophy of powerslide magazine, a philosophy that can be greatly conveyed describing the Porsche story in a big classic race. And so, here it comes: Porsche at Le Mans. The great Porsche racing manager and engineer Peter Falk described it in an interview with Herbert Linge, Egon Alber and ourselves in great detail: “Our results there were of such a great success because of our well-rehearsed team. Inside of this team everybody could fully trust the other. We grew together and stuck together – this made the difference.”

Porsche visited La Sarthe with its constantly growing and increasingly experienced team regularly every year since 1951. The untold efforts of mechanics, drivers, engineers and helpers (Herbert Linge: “It was seldom possible to sleep longer then an hour somewhere in between the piles of tyres.”) were again and again rewarded by successes. Every Porsche win means a milestone in the history of Le Mans as well.

Porsches Le Mans account looks like this:

16 overall wins (1970, 1971, 1976, 1977, 1979, 1981, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1994, 1996, 1997 and 1998), among them two overall wins (1970 and 1971) in the era of the great sportscar races, beside that a first win with a rear-engined car (the Group 5 Porsche 935 K3 turbo in 1979) and the first win in Group C with the 956 (a triple success together with two 935’s, on top of that also the IMSA GTX class, even a fivefold success in 1982). Even we could realize the importance of such a well-rehearsed, reliable and motivated team while producing this first AUTOMOBILSPORT. It was there, out of nothing, and pushed the completion of this 160-page-magazine as a matter of course.

We could count on people, who carried on the philosophy of five years of powerslide in a cross generational way, using the experience of many decades of professional motorsportjournalism and having one thing in common: minimum 100 octane in their blood. Motorsport-journalism stalwarts like the famous Karl Ludvigsen ( USA ), the germans Uwe Mahla and Eckhard Schimpf and from Austria Helmut Zwickl made the given theme alive by sharing with us their memories through their articles and pictures.

Porsche motorsport-heroes, former engineers, mechanics and drivers, like Peter Falk, Norbert Singer, Wolfgang Berger, Walter Näher, Jürgen Barth, Egon Alber, Herbert Linge, Roland Kussmaul, John Fitzpatrick and many more offered us patiently their advice and cooperation.

We would like to say ‘Thank you’ to them for that, and hope the resulting magazine that covers such a special part of motorsport history will please you, dear reader. There is one thing that unites us: our enthusiasm for automobilsport.

The magazine contains a fold out poster.