Porsche’s hopeful Le Mans future meets its illustrious past

“You feel every bump. Every single one, even at low speed. I couldn’t imagine going down the Mulsanne Straight at more than 200mph in this car. It must have been bouncing around everywhere. Respect to the guys who raced these cars.”

The car in question is a Porsche 962C, #006, the chassis with which the greatest sportscar design of all claimed a sixth victory at the Le Mans 24 Hours in 1987. The dues being paid go to Derek Bell, Hans Stuck and Al Holbert Jr, the winning line-up in the Rothmans-sponsored factory car 35 years ago, but also perhaps to the hundreds of drivers who raced the 956 and 962 at Le Mans over a period of 17 years.

Seventeen years also happens to be the time between the first race for the 962, the 1984 Daytona 24 Hours, and the birth of Adam Smalley, who is the driver handing out the accolades after clambering from the cockpit of #006. The Porsche GB Junior can’t quite believe what has just happened. Can’t quite believe his luck in having the chance to get behind the wheel of a piece of living and breathing – through twin KKK turbochargers, of course – history, and can’t believe quite how different the 962 is to the machinery he’s raced up to now in his short career.

Smalley has been called up by Porsche Great Britain and Autosport to drive the famous car as part of the 40th anniversary celebrations of the 956/962 at the 79th Members’ Meeting at Goodwood. It’s only a demonstration run behind a safety car, and Smalley and the drivers of the 20-odd cars out on track don’t hit racing speeds. Yet the young man’s fleeting acquaintance with #006 is enough to leave him in awe of the car and the drivers who raced it in period.

“Down the back straight we were snicking into fourth gear, so getting up to a pretty decent speed,” he says. “I felt every bump; there’s a lot of feedback from the track surface. I can’t imagine doing a 24-hour race in a car like this. Credit to people like Derek Bell who drove it at Le Mans.”

Five-time Le Mans winner Bell and other veterans of the 956/962 will tell you how easy the car was to drive, that it did just what it should with few if any vices. Yet they were judging the car by the standards of the day. Smalley is casting a young eye back from the present.

“It seems so much harder to drive than what I’m used to,” he continues. “It must have made for some very intense racing.”

Smalley in action in the Porsche 962C at Goodwood

Photo by: Gary Hawkins

The machine to which Smalley is used is the 992-shape Porsche 911 GT3 Cup after winning the Porsche GB Carrera Cup scholarship at the back end of last year. A season that has so far yielded a first-time-out race victory and a further three podiums hadn’t started when he sampled the Group C car, but he was familiar with its interior and what it could do on the race track as he ramped up for his 2022 campaign in pre-season testing. The famous 962C, one of a selection of cars brought along to Goodwood for the celebration by Porsche Heritage, represents a culture shock for Smalley.

“It’s so different to the cars I’ve driven,” says Smalley, who has moved into the Carrera Cup after cutting his racing teeth on the Ginetta GT ladder. He graduated from karting to Ginetta Junior as the winner of the British constructor’s scholarship scheme and on through the GT5 Challenge and the GT4 Supercup.

“Everything I’ve ever driven has had a roof, but it’s so cramped in there. In the Carrera Cup car everything is quite open; there’s a lot of room around you. This feels so enclosed. The roof is just millimetres away from the top of your helmet.

"I didn’t realise quite how much power the car has. You put your foot down in second gear and you are waiting, waiting, waiting, then all the power comes in at once" Adam Smalley

“Your legs feel quite cramped up and the pedals are really heavy with a lot more travel compared with what I’m used to. The steering is really heavy; there’s no power assistance. It’s got that H-pattern synchromesh gearbox, which isn’t a quick change, at least not like the sequential I had in Ginettas or the paddleshift in the Carrera Cup.”

Driving a turbocharged racing car is another first for Smalley; he’s never got behind the wheel of something with quite so much power. His Redline Racing Carrera Cup has 500bhp from its normally aspirated flat-six, the 962C nearer 650bhp from its blown six-cylinder. What’s more, the delivery of that power is very different.

“I didn’t realise quite how much power the car has,” he says. “You put your foot down in second gear and you are waiting, waiting, waiting, then all the power comes in at once. I’ve never experienced anything like that before.”

Smalley would have liked to get a bit more experience of that turbo power over his two brief runs in #006: he also gets to drive the car up and down the hillclimb course in front of Goodwood House for photographic purposes. His first lap out on the circuit offered a bit of a taster: “I couldn’t get first gear coming out of the pits, so I had a bit of a gap to close up. I did try backing off a bit at times so I could give it a bit of a squirt. That was cool.”

Smalley is currently on a Porsche GB Carrera Cup scholarship

Photo by: Gary Hawkins

The opportunity to drive the 1987 Le Mans winner has whet Smalley’s appetite – not to drive another piece of Le Mans history from Porsche’s historic fleet, but to get his behind into a current Le Mans racer. Sportscar racing has always been his ultimate dream from the moment he made the step up from a successful karting career that included taking Junior Max honours at the 2016 European Rotax Winter Cup at Valencia to cars. Single-seaters were never on the agenda.

“From the outset for me, the goal was always GTs and endurance racing and I have done everything possible so far to pursue my career in that direction,” he explains. “I come from a very normal background, so the costs involved in single-seaters were always out of reach.”

But for winning a seat in Ginetta Junior, Smalley reckons he might still be karting today: “Winning the Ginetta scholarship gave me a paid-for seat and got me into car racing. I’m not sure where I’d be without that.”

His career has been very much ‘lastminute dot.com’ since that maiden season. He only signed up for his title-winning Ginetta GT4 Supercup campaign last year three weeks ahead of the start of a season that yielded seven victories and a further eight podiums.

Winning the Porsche GB scholarship has given Smalley’s career some stability for the first time: for nearly 10 years now the scheme has offered a two-year programme to the winner, a heavily subsidised drive for its lucky recipient.

“I went to the shootout at Silverstone as the only one of the 12 finalists not to have driven the Carrera Cup beforehand,” he says. “I went there looking to show my purest self. It was amazing to win it, a dream come true, because the Carrera Cup was where I was looking to take my next step.”

It’s a step, he hopes, on the road to Le Mans and a professional career in motorsport at the highest echelons of sportscar racing. But Smalley won’t be drawn on how long he thinks it’s going to take him to get there. For now, as he stands next to #006, he’s thinking more about the past than the years ahead.

“What an amazing opportunity this has been, so thanks to Porsche for making it happen,” he says. “I now have so much admiration for the drivers who raced these cars back in the day at Le Mans and everywhere.

“But it’s also dangling a carrot in front of me for the future.”

With Porsche returning to the top flight of endurance racing, Smalley holds ambitions of competing for the brand at Le Mans

Photo by: Gary Hawkins

Le Mans 1987 remembered

The Porsche factory team’s eggs were all in one basket for the majority of the 1987 Le Mans 24 Hours. Its hopes rested on a single car driven by Derek Bell, Hans Stuck and Al Holbert Jr for 23 of the 24 hours. Yet the trio made it home at the top of the leaderboard to follow up on their 1986 victory.

The winning margin for Bell, Stuck and Holbert was 20 laps in a race of attrition during which a number of the fancied Porsches, one of the factory cars included, went out in the opening exchanges. Stuck remembers the pressure being intense, even though many of their rivals were out of the game early.

Bell has always paid tribute to Stuck for not turning the boost up to go for glory on the opening laps. He believes that was why their engine survived

“I really felt the pressure, because we were the last man standing, or rather the last car standing,” says the German sportscar and touring car legend. “When you are trying to win a 24-hour race in those circumstances there’s a lot of adrenalin in your body. I remember after getting out of the car having trouble producing a sample for the doctor to do the dope test. I couldn’t relax for four or five hours after that race.”

Porsche’s tortuous road to a sixth consecutive victory for the 956/962 began in the lead-up to the race. Stuck damaged the car due to be shared by team-mates Bob Wollek, Jochen Mass and Vern Schuppan during a pre-Le Mans shakedown at Weissach, resulting in a reshuffle of chassis for the event. The new-for-1987 #008 chassis used by Stuck and Bell in the opening rounds of the World Sports-Prototype Championship was given to Mass and Wollek, while the previous year’s winners got their team-mates’ older car, #006.

The Porsche cars endured a wretched lead up and start to the 1987 Le Mans 24 Hours

Photo by: Motorsport Images

The 1987 Le Mans campaign continued in the same vein in qualifying when Price Cobb crashed at the Porsche Curves. The car he was due to share with Schuppan and Kees Nierop vaulted the barriers, caught fire and was rendered hors de combat. Schuppan then moved across to the Wollek/Mass entry.

Three Porsches had become two before the race had even started, and then two became one not long after the green flag had flown. A couple of minutes past the top of the first hour, the Mass/Wollek/Schuppan car was out, one of a number of 962Cs to retire early with holed pistons, which Porsche believed was the result of the quality – or rather lack of it – of the official fuel supply. The factory team was able to adjust the Bosch Motronic engine management system on #006 and it escaped the problems.

Bell has always paid tribute to Stuck for not turning the boost up to go for glory on the opening laps. He believes that was why their engine survived. Stuck isn’t so sure, but thanks his old team-mate for the compliment and offers “one thousand back”.

“I think Derek may be overplaying that,” he says, “but one thing I can say is that between me, him and Al there was never any competition. It didn’t matter who did the fastest lap. We knew our job was to win the race.”

The #17 Rothmans Porsche 962C of Stuck, Holbert and Bell won the race by 20 laps

Photo by: Motorsport Images