Article by Tom Beeler Fifth in a series on Porsche Indy car history
espite Porsche’s breakthrough win at Mid-Ohio in 1989, the prevailing winds from Stuttgart were shifting. The program was in trouble. “The guy I reported to was Porsche’s research and sports director, Helmut Flegl,” explained Porsche Indy car program director, Derrick Walker. “He had the direction from the board, Derrick Walker headed up the Porsche Factory and he dealt head-on with them. He got all the flack that they can throw at anybody, Indy Program, from 1988 through 1990. and it filtered down to us. “But because they were in Germany and I was in America, we had to just focus on the job, and how we could get this program up to speed quick enough, quite frankly, before the interest disappeared from the factory and the board of directors.” While March’s 1989 season chassis was considered “robust and reasonably competitive” by Walker and the team, the real strength sat behind the driver. “The thing that was really good about that car was the engine,” Walker said. “It was by far the best engine, and the other Indy car teams knew it. It got better and better and better as time went on.” The 1990 season would see the 1990 variant plugged into what was supposed to be “the ultimate Porsche Indy car”, but what ultimately turned out to be “a step backwards”, according to Walker. “It was a step forward in technology and the design,” said Walker, “but the whole package just did not work. The second March that we had (the 89P) would have been, by far, the best one to stay with a while longer, and update that. But, of course, hindsight's 20/20.” The March 90P was revolutionary. Very low, lean, and - most importantly - all carbon fiber, which made it both lighter and stronger than the Lola and Penske cars running against it. “March read the rules very carefully, and realized that the use of a carbon fiber chassis would be available at the end of the 1989 season. None of the other manufacturers thought that anybody would want to go that far, because carbon chassis was still relatively new and had never been done in Formula One,” Walker said. “So, March, convinced Porsche that they could do a carbon chassis. And so, they secretly designed this car to be carbon.” Roger Penske and Carl Haas, both of them Indy car team owners and chassis builders, lobbied hard against the new March chassis. The Penske and Lola cars still
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