My great uncle (who was a car nut and owned three Lancias) worked for Gulf Oil at one stage. He was lucky enough to drive the 917 across their London HQ. Just a few meters, but still pretty cool.
Just an amazing piece of automotive documentary and film in general! Honestly I pay quite a bit on a cable subscription and rarely get content as great as this!
Video is cool until 2:58 when that geeky fucking guy ruines the video... Seriously dude stick to writing stories... Let others do the talking and the driving on camera. This guy im sure is a cool dude but every video he talks on fucks it all up. If I want to see another hamster also know as Rich Hammond... I would only hear stories from the racing hamster himself... Not this loser. Sorry to come across as an ass... But good videos and great cars need to be driven by Chris. This guy needs a desk job that's it. Stay away from the videos.
A truly wonderful, exhilarating and insightful documentary. Fascinating to learn the Porsche racing history in such a communicative and professional manner. Well done to all those involved in the making of yet another class XCar production.
Credit to you Germans, you are the best, such passion. Im proud to drive my daily little Boxster now for 4 years. Still looking back at it whenever parking at the furthest spot in a lot.... and looking back. One never gets used to beauty.
Very nice history lesson, Porsche raised nearly all its offspring on the track, the evolution continues with great success. I hope one of the Porsche Team 919 wins the 2015 LM 24Hr
Great documentary... though, I noticed it glossed over the GT1s penchant for gymnastics at Road Atlanta! Anyway, awesome to see them back in LMP racing. Not going to say I hope they keep winning; instead, I'm going to hope that all 3 of the big teams make each other work overtime to win.
I have to say this is one of De best video on youtube. As i have said it before and will happily say it again and again XCAR you are as great as PORSCHE. I LOVE LOVE LOVE the ♡356♡
I love the way Porsche saw spending money on advertising as wasting money he could put into improving the cars. This is a great piece. Everytime i watch a video/documentary and i dont want it to finish, i must relay that to those responsible. Thank you, this was brilliant.
Wonderful video. One nitpick, the 1996 GT1 car is shown when talking about the 1997 season. The 1997 Evo car has the 996 headlamps and a somewhat different body.
Excellent. I even got to see the number three car (917) at the 2:21 mark. It is on the display at the Simeone Museum in Philadelphia where I am a staff member! Cool stuff!
porsche 917k! most beautiful race car in the world! design is timeless! reduced to the max! no driving helps! just the driver and a big 12cylinder engine in the back! :-)
I complety agree, ever! The best and niceist racing car of all time, the drivers who drove it, also Rodriguez, Siffert, Ickx, Bell, Marko, Van Lennep among others, great times! Porsche forever!
Good work guys. One small writing slip up but very good precis overall and with good interviews. The Porsche moto might as well be "If you're going to do something, do it right". That's how it usually works out.
If you guys mentioned the Dauer 962 "GT1", you should have also mentioned the 917/K81 which was entered by Kremer in 1981. Yes, a Porsche 917 racing in the 1981 Le Mans 24 hours - 10 years after the ban of the 5 litre class... 1981 was a strange year with the transition from Group 6 regulations to the Group C rulebook. Porsche factory dusted off the 936, the Kremer brothers upgraded a 917. Rallye Legend Walter Röhrl debuted at Le Mans this year, as did NASCAR ace Cale Yarborough and MotoGP rider Johnny Cecotto. Anne-Charlotte Verney raced a Porsche 935 K3 - she was also Co-Driver to Mark Thatcher in the Paris-Dakar - the son of Premier Minister Margaret Thatcher And lest we forget Jean-Louis Lafosse who died in a crash on the Hunaudières straight and the two corner workers to were fatally injured being struck by debris coming of Thierry Boutsen's car after crash on the Hunaudières as well.
Love Le Mans too. The Woodstock of auto racing. I can watch the 1971 movie over and over and not get tired of it. That was the last of the Golden Age of racing.
The years later and those Toyotas have been handicapped to near oblivion but they just keep on winning. Hopefully Aston will give them a run this year.
I grew up reading about Porsche wins at LeMans in all the cool car magazines. Porsche did win with the 919. I'm sure I saw a youtube video on it. Thanks.
The 917's problem was the aerodynamic package on the 1969 car, rather than a chassis problem. Originally it had two differentially-moving trim tabs on the extreme rear corners. They can be seen on the car on the left of this shot: rr3.wikia.com/wiki/File:WM_Le_Mans-1969-06-15-012.jpg They were actuated by the suspension movement. Moveable aerodynamic devices were, of course, not allowed so they were taken off and things went south from there. Drivers insisted the car was uncontrollable without them. Following John Woolf's fatal crash at the start of the 1969 race, Porsche decided that a Kamm tail was the best and simplest cure and it solved the directional snaking problem. In 1970 there were just two 917 LHs and all the rest were 917 K variants (K standing for Kurz, meaning short, not Kamm). Here is one of the LH's: rr3.wikia.com/wiki/File:IMG_347.jpg For 1971, Porsche went all out to improve the 917 and took the research to a company called S.E.R.A. in France. They lowered the profile of the side pods and changed the tail from the 1970 LH to a reprofiled version which incorporated partially faired rear wheels and a rudimentary under tray (I'm not sure if this faired over the bottom of the engine). rr3.wikia.com/wiki/File:043_-_LE_MANS_1971.jpg Notice the lower profile side pods and the different front air dam. Gulf had two of these and the rest were 917 Kurtz models. Martini had the third Langheck. I'm sure you know what they looked like. S.E.R.A. predicted the top speed of the 1971 LH to be about 385 km/h. In the race, the ACO speed trap timed it at 362 km/h, the fastest anyone had ever been at Le Mans until 1978. That said, the drivers in 1971 still complained of the Langheck wandering all over the road on the Mulsanne. This was as much a matter of it being a public road with a high crown as anything else but it would still be fair to say that they never really cured the problems in the Langheck.
As you can tell from My Username(which *IS* My Name), I'm a Fan of German Engineering!!! Yet, unlike most of the "Commentators" on Channels(and Videos) such as This, *I* haven't Forgotten that *Men* had to DRIVE these Incredible Machines!!! Men!! Just Think about the Fearlessness of the Man Behind the Wheel, and NOT JUST the Men Behind the Slide Rule!!! It's the *Combination* of "Man and Machine" that Drives(pun Intended) the Pursuit Forward, to New Heights....
***** What a fantastic video. I'll be watching this again at home tonight. Then after I'll look out onto my drive and say 'how lucky am I to have a classic piece of Porsche history sitting right outside my house'. Porsche is for life! instagram.com/p/2c4k8wJ7Rt/?taken-by=cinelliman050
18:25 - i was thinking he was going to comment that it was because of the 944 being so easy to drive that he could drive home straight after....... But, no.
God I want so hard to see the last few laps the battle between our Porsche and the GT40; to witness the moment they were at Mulsanne straight looking into each other's eyes. So hilarious!
+Yilun Mao There is a 19 second video with no audio including the part of the Mulsanne straight where the overtaking happens (probably at well over 200 mph), and them crossing the finish line with the Porsche right behind. It is titled: "Le Mans 1969-porsche 908-ford gt40" posted by nankerphelge686
This is well done. Thanks.... and taking advice from the guy below I subscribed. LOL If you have not been to Le mans then you must go. Been twice with Panoz in '98 and 2000. It is the Disneyland of racing. So much stuff goes on, so many things to do and see and then there are the women. ooooooolala LOLOL
+SuperExcedrin CFD programs don't design race cars. Passionate people use them to make the fastest cars they can. If the designers of the 917 or them 962 had the tools today's engineers have, they wouldn't have designed cars that looked like the 917 either.
That depends on a lot of things. Rule changes have a lot to do with it and this can be selected in anything from the total height to the cooling of the engine. All of those factors will influence what the final result will look like too. So the answer is less dependent on the age of the vehicle - the demands of aerodynamics haven't changed, though the practices have. An example is the splitter plate under a modern F1 car, which wasn't around in the 70s or 80s and will have a very pronounced effect on the overall shape. Otherwise, yes: you're right. You're even more right when you say that CFD programs don't design cars.
I'm normally a laid back kind of guy but I just want to punch the Limey who calls them Three Five Sixes and Nine Two Fours. Then he forgets and calls another the Nine Fifty Nine. I like the historian who calls them the way Americans do.
The VW group has owned Le Mans for the last 15+ years through Audi and Bentley short the year that they let Peugeot get a look in, now Audi is handing over to Porsche.
You are quite a funny guy...aren't you...? lol! "The VW group has owned Le Mans .... through Audi and Bentley"... Bentley...whatttt?? Are you serious?? The Bentley Speed 8 which won the race in 2003 was a 1:1 Audi R8, you idiot! The V8 engine was from the Audi R8 racecar too. The Joest-Team was responsible for the Bentley LeMans "adventure" with their full team plus the Audi Werks-drivers! And VW decided that Audi didn't take part on the race that year. It was just a "political" decision from VW. The winner would have been Audi, when they had raced there too... The "original" is always better! They gave the Audi R8 racecar a fixed roof, and voila, there was the "Bentley EXP/ Speed 8 "...haha! Forget about Bentley! They had nothing for racing at that time. Today it's a ridiculously fat Continental GT in GT3 spec, which is brought to a "winning formula" through the shitty "balance of performance" rules, which kills motorsport...haha! Bentleys are fat cows and certainly not racecarlike!
And trust Walter to make it about himself. All he had to say was "i could drive home straight after as the racecar was so easy to drive"... typical racing driver :)
My great uncle (who was a car nut and owned three Lancias) worked for Gulf Oil at one stage. He was lucky enough to drive the 917 across their London HQ. Just a few meters, but still pretty cool.
Just an amazing piece of automotive documentary and film in general! Honestly I pay quite a bit on a cable subscription and rarely get content as great as this!
Saleem Hodge Well said Mr. Hodge! Sometimes, the shortest commentaries pack the biggest punch! BAM😬 cable monster's!
These guys need more subscribers. They are better than everyone else.
Agree
Well these and Petrolicious.
mazdaman1980 true and I am also subscribed to them :)
Then you are clearly a man of excellent car video taste also lol. We are conneseurs!
Video is cool until 2:58 when that geeky fucking guy ruines the video... Seriously dude stick to writing stories... Let others do the talking and the driving on camera. This guy im sure is a cool dude but every video he talks on fucks it all up. If I want to see another hamster also know as Rich Hammond... I would only hear stories from the racing hamster himself... Not this loser. Sorry to come across as an ass... But good videos and great cars need to be driven by Chris. This guy needs a desk job that's it. Stay away from the videos.
A truly wonderful, exhilarating and insightful documentary. Fascinating to learn the Porsche racing history in such a communicative and professional manner. Well done to all those involved in the making of yet another class XCar production.
Credit to you Germans, you are the best, such passion. Im proud to drive my daily little Boxster now for 4 years. Still looking back at it whenever parking at the furthest spot in a lot.... and looking back. One never gets used to beauty.
What a heartwarming video. Thank you XCAR, great work as always.
The best videos talking about cars, and this is the best history video i've ever seen. Keep doing things as well as you been doing it!!
Bravo XCar. You guys have really been pushing the boundaries in relevant content, videography and entertainment. Keep it up!!!!
Absolutely loved this,you guys did a propper in-depth documentary. I hope to see more of this in the future.
It's a great story, and the perfect time to tell it. Even though I'm an Audi Sport fan, I'm super excited to see Porsche back in the game. Giddy up.
amazing. i never really watched le mans.. but now that my favorite brand is participating again, i'm becoming a new fan of le mans.)
Keep up the good work, I love your videos
Very nice history lesson, Porsche raised nearly all its offspring on the track, the evolution continues with great success. I hope one of the Porsche Team 919 wins the 2015 LM 24Hr
They produce the BEST videos ever. Truly AMAZING.
Great documentary... though, I noticed it glossed over the GT1s penchant for gymnastics at Road Atlanta!
Anyway, awesome to see them back in LMP racing. Not going to say I hope they keep winning; instead, I'm going to hope that all 3 of the big teams make each other work overtime to win.
02:15 Morning cozyness and excitement in same breath take. Priceless.
Great video, and superb production! You deserve a lot more views!
I have to say this is one of De best video on youtube.
As i have said it before and will happily say it again and again XCAR you are as great as PORSCHE.
I LOVE LOVE LOVE the ♡356♡
I love the way Porsche saw spending money on advertising as wasting money he could put into improving the cars.
This is a great piece. Everytime i watch a video/documentary and i dont want it to finish, i must relay that to those responsible. Thank you, this was brilliant.
Racing itself is advertising, so that should be alright. 😉
God I love geeky videos like this.
Amen to that. Maybe people can suggest other similar motorsports videos here (please?).
Hope you're well and good.
Me too!
Wonderful video. One nitpick, the 1996 GT1 car is shown when talking about the 1997 season. The 1997 Evo car has the 996 headlamps and a somewhat different body.
I thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed this.
What a brilliant video, well shot and composed!
Good Memories and always updated
Excellent. I even got to see the number three car (917) at the 2:21 mark. It is on the display at the Simeone Museum in Philadelphia where I am a staff member! Cool stuff!
This video is great, great job guys.
The only unfortunate thing is that, we lost Le Mans, it is really disappointing.
Well done xcar team.
You guys are awesome! Thanks for a great introduction to the race today!
Beautiful .. Thank you
porsche 917k! most beautiful race car in the world! design is timeless! reduced to the max! no driving helps! just the driver and a big 12cylinder engine in the back! :-)
Agreed. Ford GT 40 a very close second!
I complety agree, ever! The best and niceist racing car of all time, the drivers who drove it, also Rodriguez, Siffert, Ickx, Bell, Marko, Van Lennep among others, great times! Porsche forever!
Right On Garcia!!! You visualize what you want to do,then do it!!!Good Luck my freind
this is a masterpiece. Brilliant work
this is amazing. COME ON PORSCHE, THE BEST LE MANS COMPETTITORS
***** YOU GOT IT, GO PORSCE
I love listening to Walter Rorhl talk about racing. His rally stories are great.
Excellent...or should I say, Excellence?
Well in less then 10 hours i'll be seing this beast on the track , cant wait !
This is a great video! If you could do a small update on the 919 and 919 eco now that’d be sooo cool
Thanks! How pretty is the green Porsche at 14:18 Stunning !
Good work guys. One small writing slip up but very good precis overall and with good interviews. The Porsche moto might as well be "If you're going to do something, do it right". That's how it usually works out.
If you guys mentioned the Dauer 962 "GT1", you should have also mentioned the 917/K81 which was entered by Kremer in 1981. Yes, a Porsche 917 racing in the 1981 Le Mans 24 hours - 10 years after the ban of the 5 litre class...
1981 was a strange year with the transition from Group 6 regulations to the Group C rulebook. Porsche factory dusted off the 936, the Kremer brothers upgraded a 917.
Rallye Legend Walter Röhrl debuted at Le Mans this year, as did NASCAR ace Cale Yarborough and MotoGP rider Johnny Cecotto.
Anne-Charlotte Verney raced a Porsche 935 K3 - she was also Co-Driver to Mark Thatcher in the Paris-Dakar - the son of Premier Minister Margaret Thatcher
And lest we forget Jean-Louis Lafosse who died in a crash on the Hunaudières straight and the two corner workers to were fatally injured being struck by debris coming of Thierry Boutsen's car after crash on the Hunaudières as well.
+tommy9927 They were focusing on winning and the 917 K81 was slow.
Wonderful video and history. Thanks for producing.
Really well put together, thank you XCAR ;D
Absolutely brilliant video!
Huge quality documentary. congrats :)
Awesome video. Love Porsche! Love Le Mans! BTW, which is the music playing at the end?
Love Le Mans too. The Woodstock of auto racing. I can watch the 1971 movie over and over and not get tired of it. That was the last of the Golden Age of racing.
Porsche, the best engineered things on earth.
Helmut Marco und Gijs van Lennep so cool never knew they raced together.
Watching this on the day Porsche won Le Mans 2016. Feel so bad for Toyota.
Bayonet Toyota was so close
The years later and those Toyotas have been handicapped to near oblivion but they just keep on winning. Hopefully Aston will give them a run this year.
Working on the Lego 930 this is therapy thank you..peace
I grew up reading about Porsche wins at LeMans in all the cool car magazines. Porsche did win with the 919. I'm sure I saw a youtube video on it. Thanks.
That was splendid. Thank you.
Thanks for this...just brilliant
Amazing video, thanks guys!
Nice documentary.
Interesting documentary.
Le Mans is of course the most famous track, but for me, Spa Francorshamps is the most beautiful circuit in the world.
I love how Mr.Röhrl says that he drove 944 prototype in LeMans just before it was launched to normal people :D
Wonderful video . Congratulations !!!
I notice that they don't mention that the 917 handled like crap until John Wyer's engineer John Horsman fixed it....
The 917's problem was the aerodynamic package on the 1969 car, rather than a chassis problem. Originally it had two differentially-moving trim tabs on the extreme rear corners. They can be seen on the car on the left of this shot:
rr3.wikia.com/wiki/File:WM_Le_Mans-1969-06-15-012.jpg
They were actuated by the suspension movement. Moveable aerodynamic devices were, of course, not allowed so they were taken off and things went south from there. Drivers insisted the car was uncontrollable without them. Following John Woolf's fatal crash at the start of the 1969 race, Porsche decided that a Kamm tail was the best and simplest cure and it solved the directional snaking problem. In 1970 there were just two 917 LHs and all the rest were 917 K variants (K standing for Kurz, meaning short, not Kamm). Here is one of the LH's:
rr3.wikia.com/wiki/File:IMG_347.jpg
For 1971, Porsche went all out to improve the 917 and took the research to a company called S.E.R.A. in France. They lowered the profile of the side pods and changed the tail from the 1970 LH to a reprofiled version which incorporated partially faired rear wheels and a rudimentary under tray (I'm not sure if this faired over the bottom of the engine).
rr3.wikia.com/wiki/File:043_-_LE_MANS_1971.jpg
Notice the lower profile side pods and the different front air dam. Gulf had two of these and the rest were 917 Kurtz models. Martini had the third Langheck. I'm sure you know what they looked like. S.E.R.A. predicted the top speed of the 1971 LH to be about 385 km/h. In the race, the ACO speed trap timed it at 362 km/h, the fastest anyone had ever been at Le Mans until 1978. That said, the drivers in 1971 still complained of the Langheck wandering all over the road on the Mulsanne. This was as much a matter of it being a public road with a high crown as anything else but it would still be fair to say that they never really cured the problems in the Langheck.
Is there like an "aspirational music" repository somewhere, where you and Drive source your uncharacteristically non-hard-rock backing tracks?
That was awesome.
That 911 RSR! What a beast!
Really really good :D
PORSCHE is back!
Awesome video.
As you can tell from My Username(which *IS* My Name), I'm a Fan of German Engineering!!!
Yet, unlike most of the "Commentators" on Channels(and Videos) such as This, *I* haven't Forgotten that *Men* had to DRIVE these Incredible Machines!!!
Men!! Just Think about the Fearlessness of the Man Behind the Wheel, and NOT JUST the Men Behind the Slide Rule!!!
It's the *Combination* of "Man and Machine" that Drives(pun Intended) the Pursuit Forward, to New Heights....
Great film
***** What a fantastic video. I'll be watching this again at home tonight. Then after I'll look out onto my drive and say 'how lucky am I to have a classic piece of Porsche history sitting right outside my house'. Porsche is for life! instagram.com/p/2c4k8wJ7Rt/?taken-by=cinelliman050
So good...
They just won, hopefully they win the next ones...
Zack Halverson And they won
Epic, just epic...
Someday i will race for Porsche! I promise.... So remember my name!
***** I will hopefully be featured in one of your video when i do! haha awesome!
Really! What team are you in at the moment
None, but I will someday
Josue Garcia Oh. How old are you then?
17
Is there like an "aspirational music" repository somewhere, where you and Drive source your uncharacteristically non-hard rock car sound-tracks.
Thank you for this *****
what a video!!!!
Great video. Can anyone tell me the name of the song at the very start of this video?
Darude - Sandstorm
Excellent!!!!!
Great video!
18:25 - i was thinking he was going to comment that it was because of the 944 being so easy to drive that he could drive home straight after....... But, no.
YOU WILL WIN PORSCHE
God I want so hard to see the last few laps the battle between our Porsche and the GT40; to witness the moment they were at Mulsanne straight looking into each other's eyes. So hilarious!
Yilun Mao If you mean the final laps of 1969, search for it.
deggis4 its a lot harder than that, i saw this comment and tried, even though i didn't really know what you were on about, its really hard to find!!!
marcus allison Yes, looks like the video I was talking about has disappeared. It was a full
ahh well, I'm sure its somewhere, it'll turn up one day :)
+Yilun Mao
There is a 19 second video with no audio including the part of the Mulsanne straight where the overtaking happens (probably at well over 200 mph), and them crossing the finish line with the Porsche right behind. It is titled: "Le Mans 1969-porsche 908-ford gt40" posted by nankerphelge686
ive said this a few times... Porsche´s history is lemans history. and i think Le mans wouldnt be the same without that prosche rich history.
Hi. Does anyone know the music starting at 0:41?
I think a new management would get us Le Mans again.
This is well done. Thanks.... and taking advice from the guy below I subscribed. LOL If you have not been to Le mans then you must go. Been twice with Panoz in '98 and 2000. It is the Disneyland of racing. So much stuff goes on, so many things to do and see and then there are the women. ooooooolala LOLOL
9:49 I love that voice :D
I miss XCAR…. ;)
they outlawed the 917 k
Porsche is awesome has awesome engineers i am sad that Porsche will not be in 2018 lemans :(
Interesting.
And 3 wins they were
And now Porsche has won 3 in a row at Le Mans. It's as if they never left.
Pictures and video, don't do the GT1 justice, you have to see one in person.
Wow the 917 👍
It is too bad CFD programs don't spit out the shape of a 917, or McLaren M8.
+SuperExcedrin CFD programs don't design race cars. Passionate people use them to make the fastest cars they can. If the designers of the 917 or them 962 had the tools today's engineers have, they wouldn't have designed cars that looked like the 917 either.
That depends on a lot of things. Rule changes have a lot to do with it and this can be selected in anything from the total height to the cooling of the engine. All of those factors will influence what the final result will look like too. So the answer is less dependent on the age of the vehicle - the demands of aerodynamics haven't changed, though the practices have. An example is the splitter plate under a modern F1 car, which wasn't around in the 70s or 80s and will have a very pronounced effect on the overall shape. Otherwise, yes: you're right. You're even more right when you say that CFD programs don't design cars.
Where is the rs spyder?
GO PORSCHE. GO PORSCHE
I'm normally a laid back kind of guy but I just want to punch the Limey who calls them Three Five Sixes and Nine Two Fours. Then he forgets and calls another the Nine Fifty Nine. I like the historian who calls them the way Americans do.
Walter Röhrl is the greatest driver in history.
The VW group has owned Le Mans for the last 15+ years through Audi and Bentley short the year that they let Peugeot get a look in, now Audi is handing over to Porsche.
You are quite a funny guy...aren't you...? lol! "The VW group has owned Le Mans .... through Audi and Bentley"... Bentley...whatttt?? Are you serious?? The Bentley Speed 8 which won the race in 2003 was a 1:1 Audi R8, you idiot! The V8 engine was from the Audi R8 racecar too. The Joest-Team was responsible for the Bentley LeMans "adventure" with their full team plus the Audi Werks-drivers! And VW decided that Audi didn't take part on the race that year. It was just a "political" decision from VW. The winner would have been Audi, when they had raced there too... The "original" is always better!
They gave the Audi R8 racecar a fixed roof, and voila, there was the "Bentley EXP/ Speed 8 "...haha! Forget about Bentley!
They had nothing for racing at that time. Today it's a ridiculously fat Continental GT in GT3 spec, which is brought to a "winning formula" through the shitty "balance of performance" rules, which kills motorsport...haha! Bentleys are fat cows and certainly not racecarlike!
And trust Walter to make it about himself. All he had to say was "i could drive home straight after as the racecar was so easy to drive"... typical racing driver :)