Why was the 917 so revolutionary?

[Paolo-LoveGT40 Modelworks]

Seppi...too great one.
A must to see (also if in german with subtitles) is this documentary:
Jo Siffert - Film

think his name is a too important connection with the 917.

details of his life:
Jo Siffert: ricordo di un campione
he was a second cars dealer as first occupation..will be lovely to buy something old from him,maybe a third hand rusty Porsche.

a short traslation from link above:
"on Zeltweg track Seppi's mom use to go to see his grow up son racing. The lady was the typiacal grandma u can immagine, nearly perfect and on the starting grid, where Seppi was in pole position near Jackie Stewart..she told him "be careful...dont drive too fast!"

 

[K-Style]

It was not a great racer initially in 1969 it was a pig to race and unfortunately cost the life of John Wolfe at Le Mans. Until the car was developed by having a Kurt tail and made more stable then it started winning.
Reagrds Allan

Indeed. In 1969 it was beaten at the Japanese Grand Prix by the Nissan R382. Admittedly the factory support probably wasnt' there for the Porsche. + Nissan had 3 R382's to 1 917.

The car Nissan ran in 1966 (R380) was pretty much a copy of the Porsche 904 body based on a brabham bt8 chassis. The motor wsa twin cam GR8. It beat the Porsche 906 to the flag.

With updated bodywork (similar to 906/910) the 1967 R380A-II with the same motor came in second to the 906.

In 1968 the R381 with active wings rolled in with the win.

In 1969...

This car ran a Nissan 6L V12 (580ps) and was largely aluminium tube frame with central aluminium monocoque.

The GRX V12 had two turbos for the R383 putting out 515kw but the Japanese GP was canned and the car never raced.

 

[John Milmont]

Its amazing how poor the aero package was when the 917 first came out...

 

[John Killgore]

enjoy:

 

[John Milmont]

Mark Donohue made great contributions to the development of the car.
For weeks he was a regular guest at Helmut Flegl`s house here in Stuttgart enjoying the famour swabian beer...

But don`t underestimate the contributions of Seppi Siffert and Willy Kauhsen for the basic development of the 917/10 in 1969/1970.
Below pics of Siffert at Weissach testing ground in 1969. Also a pic of Willy Kauhsen leading the 1972 Interseries race at the Nürburgring in his 917/10. Cloud of smoke in the background is from Herbert Müller`s Porsche 908/03 having crashed into the guard rails at the entry of the pit lane.

i once heard a story saying that the 917's bodywork was so thin, that a piece of TAPE hit the front of the car at speed and made noticable damage. This picture with Seppi sitting on the car says otherwise.

 

[ibsenop]

Only to illustrate this forum.

 

[Allan Feldman]

Jon you originally posted was about the 1970 917K the Le Mans winner. As far as I have heard form Richard Attwood who co drove the winning car with Hans Hermann. He said that they had a preference for the Kurt body with a 4.5litre enginge not the 4.9 litre enginges that were in some of the other 917 (I think the Langhecks). Since the 24hours of Le Mans is won by the not the fastest car but one who survives he thought this combination would give them the best chance. Of course the wet weather also played its part.
Marcus I understand your viewpoint. But the 917 in 1969 form was outright dangerous to drive even by professional drivers. Porsche in fact were extremely delighted when it finished its second race and came 8th driven by David Piper and Frank Gardener at the 1969 Nurburgring 1000km. After the BMW contracted drivers Dieter Questerand Hubert Hahne were pulled out with very short notice. Frank gardener said that the car took up the whole straights width in its handling. At the 1969 Le Mans practise sessions it took the bravery of Rolf Stommelen to convince the CSI to let the 917 keep its moveable tail flaps. He did a number of laps with the tail flaps disconnected and needed the full width of the road and more at full speed on the Mulsanne straight to get the CSI to let the 917 run with the moveable flaps!!
Regards Allan

 

[Marcus]

Allan, spot on.
Frank Gardener even called the 917 in 69 "a bloody heap of junk that was all over the place". Hans Hermann called it "simply overpowered".
In the light of even professionals having their difficulties driving the 69`917 it becomes clear why Porsche was not keen on an amateur driving the car at one of the world`s most popular race.

Best,

Marcus

 

[Marcus]

...speaking of amateurs driving a 917:
There was a well known German 917 driver in 1970 and 1971 (I won`t mention his name) who ran several brothels and night clubs just for the sake of financing the campaigning of his 917 in the international racing circus.

Best,
Marcus

 

[Allan Feldman]

...speaking of amateurs driving a 917:
There was a well known German 917 driver in 1970 and 1971 (I won`t mention his name) who ran several brothels and night clubs just for the sake of financing the campaigning of his 917 in the international racing circus.

Best,
Marcus

If he was running brothels and night clubs he was no amateur!!

I read that that the 917 had been homolagated and its driver (John Woofe) deemed compendent to race. I just wish they thought more about people and banned him from buying the car in the first place. Even though they would had admitted the car was not safe!! And probable the CSI would have taken away the 917 homolagation. Until they were satisfied the car was safe to race. But of course they could not admit that.

Regards Allan

 

[Marcus]

Maybe the word "amateur" doesn`t quite capture it.
Perhaps "member of the pay-to-play-league" puts it better.

And yes, you are absolutely right...the essence of all statements given by the 917-drivers in 69 was that the car not only was unsafe to drive under racing conditions (but then which car in these days wasn`t except the GT40) but even dangerous.
In a way Stommelen was an unsung hero.

Best,
Marcus

 

[Ardern Cars]

I was crewing in IMSA the weekend Rolf was killed at Riverside. His 935 backed into the turn 9 wall when his wing collapsed. He moved 2 cement barriers with that 1800 lb car. That was the only time I was ever at an event where a driver was killed. It impacted me deeply. The silence was the thing. The announcers weren't talking and thats how you knew. I felt most sad for Glen Blakely the fabricator on the car. We were friends with him and you're heart broke for what he was feeling.
Chris

 

[Howard Jones]

I have a friend here in Calif. that builds 910's from scratch. I was over his place with my GTD once and we were drinking some beer and talking about cars and out of the blue he says. "You know Denis you're lucky really, you can drive this car, my GTD, and feel safe doing it. If my wife knew how dangerous my Porsche is she would never let me drive it. Ever!"

He then went into a 30 min comparison of the two cars from a safety point of view. The bottom line was, in his VERY qualified opinion, is that the GTD could take a fairly hard hit up to about 50-60MPH in the front and you could survive it, as long as it didn't burn. Getting T- boned presented the biggest danger without a roll-cage but he though that my cage would keep a car out of and off of me up to a fairly hard hit. Again the fear of fire.

The Porsche however was a killer at nearly any speed above 40MPH from any angle. He pointed out the front had your feet hanging out in the wind behind thin fiberglass and some 5/8 diameter thin tubing. Worse.. they are in front of the axles. The rest of the car is no better. No roll cage whatever. Just enough tubing to fix the body work in place and hang the suspension on. His 910 with a flat 6 in it weighted under 1000 pounds. Think about that in relation to the wall thickness of the chassis tubing and bodywork. He could lift the entire chassis with the suspension on it by himself and hang it up on the wall of the shop!

In the end it came down to an extra 700 pounds of chassis materials in my GTD. Weight is safety.

The 917's were not much better and having looked at one up close I wouldn't care to drive one in anger on any track with walls or other cars. Not to say that I would be qualified to do so anyway. Maybe a replica with a 300 hp flat 6 in it might be possible and within my performance envelop, but putting in a reasonable amount of power doesn't change the safety aspects of the chassis. Driving one as a street car would be suicidal.

 

[Graham T]

Howard,

You are so right about the cars vunerability and yet they ran their time with very little "driver damage" compared to what they achieved.

Do not think though that a replica with only 300bhp and a flat six is any safer than the original.

100mph is the same in any car.

I love driving my 917 and do not think about my, or its vunerability when racing, but if i do have a "biggy" i hope i will live to tell the tale. What people decide to race is their decision and they accept the risk ..... or challenge.

Regards,

Graham.

 

[John S]

I must say at this years Classic Le Mans I also looked at the chassis of most of the cars and was amazed at the lack of protection. I first thought about this while looking inside the Porsche 550 Spyder of Gijs van Lennep (Le Mans winner and distance record holder in the 917), but noticed that even a car as late as the Lola T70 hardly has a roll bar to speak off. Just a few tiny tubes. The drivers back then must have only thought about winning and not of crashing.

But as Graham points out we all decide for ourselves what we like to race with.

John

 

[John Milmont]

Didn't Jackie Stewart start brining up safety issues around this time? I think they were starting to get concerned about safety, but, engineers designed and built the cars to win, maybe they didn't care so much about the drivers?

 

[Russ Noble]

I love driving my 917 and do not think about my, or its vunerability when racing, but if i do have a "biggy" i hope i will live to tell the tale. What people decide to race is their decision and they accept the risk ..... or challenge.

Regards,

Graham.

Graham is right,

I think if given the option, a real racer would choose a car that has less safety features but will be a winner, rather than an identical car that has more safety features but will never get onto the podium because it is burdened down by extra weight! That is the nature of a real racer, winning is all...... and many sacrifices involving money, time, relationships and risk are all made to achieve that.

 

[Manny]

It was a different time and place and the expectations were that if you crashed heavily you paid dearly for it.

Today a track car is expected to provide sufficient protection that in most cases you won't get killed if you crash it. It isn't totally about weight, but a track car designed today is going to have a full cage and protection for the drivers feet (as well as some crush structure ahead of that). This is pretty much as it should have been then, but frankly we weren't smart enought to realize it at the time. A good friend of mine designed the Fabcar and he was amazed at how unsafe a 917 was. He got to look one over carefully and in his words it was a "death trap". Like I said, it was a different place and time.....

What is interesting is that if you design a nice cage that provides sufficient protection for the driver and passenger, you have plenty of structural strenght and stiffness and all you need to do at that point is skin it with light sheet and that IS your track car. You need to hang suspension on it and get the frame back to pick up the rear suspension, and that can be much like it was in the past. If you look at what it is going to cost you in weight do it that way as compared to the very light space frame structures of a 917, the impact is probaly on the order of 100-150 pounds. That comes from an estimate of about 90 feet of tubing that is required for the cage (at about twice the weight of the uncaged car), compared to the same tubing that would be required for a 917 space frame (assuming both were closed cars with a steel windshield hoop). So really the weight impact isn't a big deal. And it might be less than that if you realize that you don't need as much triangulation (the skin does that just fine if the edge tubing is as big as it needs to be for the cage) in the caged car.

With the need for a cage in a track car tho, I don't think that a light sheet monoque (like in a T70) makes much sense anymore. Just build a cage, skin it and go to town.

 

[Russ Noble]

You are right Manny,

But if they'd built them that way back then, that weight would still have been a significant penalty. And I'm sure back then they knew how to build safer cars but for a constructor to voluntarily incorporate those safety features back in those days would have rendered them significantly less competitive. Now it is the same for everybody because safety levels are mandated.

You only have to look at the difference in lap times in F1 between full tanks and near empty tanks to see the effect of a few extra kilos.

Even today a driver would still choose to go with a lighter, more competitive car even if there was some safety trade off. This is why the governing bodies and the drivers associations long ago removed that decision from the drivers and constructors by mandating compulsory protection standards so sport does not get negative publicity. Remember in the 60's and 70's, topline drivers were dying like flies. Even that limited life expectancy didn't stop very many of them from getting in those death traps. They were drivers wanting to win. Nothing else mattered. Your first paragraph sums it up nicely.

The bonus is that these days with modern materials and design, particularly in F1 and Le Mans sports cars etc, it is possible to build a strong safe car with hardly any weight penalty for safety features. Win/win!

 

[Randy V]

Didn't Jackie Stewart start brining up safety issues around this time? I think they were starting to get concerned about safety, but, engineers designed and built the cars to win, maybe they didn't care so much about the drivers?

Stewart began his campaign for safety in 1966 and was a staunch proponent of safety reform in motorsports until 1973 when he retired from racing - but still campaigns fiercely for safety... So yes - You are correct....