Porsche 962C - 1989

After its success in the 1985 World Sportscar Championship, Porsche had the satisfaction of seeing its 962C once again dominate this discipline the following year, even though the official team had to settle for third place behind private teams Brun and Joest. In 1987, Jaguar took the lead, only leaving the Germans with two races, including the 24 Hours of Le Mans.  Next year, the Porsche team tried again to win in France, but without success, even though they had given up on the championship. This meant that the task was left to private teams battling it out against Jaguar and Sauber in the World Championship, where the 962 Group C model continued to shine for a few more years.

In the history of endurance racing, the list of successes achieved by the 962 is one of the longest recorded for a single model. Apart from the two world titles in 1985 and 1986 with the 962C version homologated in FIA Group C, the 962 can also boast three IMSA GTP championships (1985, 1986 and 1987), the competitions for which it was originally developed and in which it competed from 1984 onwards. When only the races are counted, taking into account the different versions modified by the private teams, the total number of victories amounts to approximately 200.

These include two victories at Le Mans (plus the 1994 win by its offspring, the Dauer 962), five triumphs at Daytona and four at the 12 Hours of Sebring. As for private teams, the German Joest team, a long-standing partner of Porsche and one of the most successful teams in Endurance racing (currently the most successful at Le Mans with 13 victories, surpassing the official Porsche team), entered its first model in the IMSA GTP championship in 1986, followed by several 962Cs primarily used in the Interserie championship. The first victory came at Hockenheim with Klaus Ludwig, followed by Bob Wollek's win at Zeltweg. Wollek also triumphed in 1988 at the Kyalami 500 km and in 1989 at the Nürburgring Supercup, the Silverstone race and at the Dijon 480 km. That same year, the Joest team competed at Le Mans with three cars manned by Bob Wollek and Hans-Joachim Stuck, alongside the all-French crew of Henri Pescarolo, Jean-Louis Ricci and Claude Ballot-Léna, and Pierre-Henri Raphanel paired with Germans Frank Jelinski and Louis Krages, a German gentleman driver racing under the pseudonym ‘John Winter’.

The presence of the 962 in this edition was impressive: more than twenty examples lined up at the start, not only those of Team Joest but also those of other teams such as Brun, Schuppan, Richard Lloyd, Jochen Dauer and Kremer, who competed with a modified version.

In a race marked by many eliminations and withdrawals, the German team was the only one to finish with two of its three cars taking places of honour: Wollek and Stuck in the number 9 car took 3rd place on the podium behind two Sauber-Mercedes cars, while their French colleagues in the number 8 car finished 7th overall.

The following year, Stuck, Jelinski and Derek Bell finished fourth behind another 962, that of the Alpha Racing team. Despite being in the twilight of its career, the 962 managed to win again at Daytona in 1991: this time it was a car from the Joest team, driven by a quintet of drivers consisting of Wollek, Jelinski, Pescarolo, John Winter and Hurley Haywood.

It was two veterans that gave the 962 one of its last successes at Le Mans. Hans-Joachim Stuck accompanied the car throughout its entire existence, participating in a total of eight Le Mans marathons (out of a total of approximately twenty). During the last race, he drove the second Dauer to third place in the successful 1994 edition. Despite six seasons in Formula 1, endurance racing remained the discipline in which he enjoyed his greatest successes. World Sportscar Champion in 1985, he won several times at Sebring and claimed the German Touring Car Championship (DTM) title in 1990.

As for his French teammate, Robert ‘Bob’ Wollek, one of Porsche's most beloved drivers, the 24 Hours of Le Mans became the source of his biggest regrets, since he finished second four times between 1978 and 1990 without ever achieving the overall victory. On the other hand, he won the 24 Hours of Daytona four times between 1983 and 1991 and one edition of the 12 Hours of Sebring (1985). It was in Sebring that he died in 2001, the victim of a road accident while cycling home after a test session. His list of achievements included a European Championship title for Endurance Drivers in 1983 and 11 victories in Sport-Prototypes and GT.