Special Feature - RennSport Reunion VI

Special Feature

RENNSport Reunion VI - Get Your Porsche On

Story and Photography | Dan Heyman

So there we were, sat at a table in Schooners, the resident eatery at the Monterey Plaza Hotel and Spa in Monterey, California. Myself and four colleagues, surrounded, not by tourists, but by a who’s who of Porsche lore who had arrived en masse from the US, Germany, and beyond to this sleepy little town. We were all here attending RENNSport Reunion VI, a gathering of all things Porsche racing (“Renn” = “racing” in German, and it’s where the “RS” in “GT2 RS” or “GT3 RS” comes from), held at the Weathertech Laguna Seca Raceway, 18 kilometres down the road in Salinas, California. Taking place every four years, it’s a chance for the storied marque to show how far it’s come since 356 #1 rolled off the line in 1948.

To my right, Norbert Singer, the engineer whose hands had touched almost every significant Porsche race car between 1970 and 1998, was chattng amicably with four friends, including driver Jürgen Barth. Directly across from me sat five-time Le Mans winner Derek Bell casually sipping tea, driving gloves on the table in front of him. Behind me? Jacky Ickx, whose accolades on the track are matched—even overshadowed—by his dedication to driver safety; he wore a unique helmet to better protect himself from flying debris and at Le Mans in 1969, decided to protest the traditional Le Mans start (whereby drivers first sprint to their cars, then push off), by strolling to his car after all the other drivers were way down pit row.

“In those days,” said Ickx, “drivers would drive entire stints (usually about three hours) with no belts on because once you’re off, you have no time to do it.” He’d go on to win that race, while one of the drivers who had participated in the traditional start would perish after being thrown from his vehicle during a crash; sure enough, he’d been in such a rush that he hadn’t the time to do up the belts.

Van Lennep, Lins, Mass; the hits just kept on coming and it was right then and there that the full effect of RENNSport VI hit me: I was no longer in the real world. It was as if I’d entered a dreamscape, Inception-style, and all that existed at that moment was me, my colleagues, the drivers, and the engineers (the early-morning fog socking us in contributed to the illusion). It was almost exactly as I’d pictured it when I wrote about in these very pages last month.

So complete is RENNSport’s takeover of the area that you can spend five minutes on the town’s main drag and chances are you’ll see a classic Porsche; I did this and saw three 356s, two 911s and one Boxster in the span of about three minutes. No Cayennes or Macans, though. For the duration of our stay in Monterrey, a Porsche 918 was intermittently parked out front of our hotel. No big deal. Just a million-dollar, 1 of 918 hybrid hypercar, parked right there on the curb. Pretty sure I was woken from my slumber on the second day by a Carrera GT.

For somebody who has been studying the brand since he was a boy, this was must-see-TV. “It’s the pinnacle of what a car manufacturer can do,” said Canadian racing legend Kees Nierop, who would be taking stints behind the wheel of a Porsche 934 throughout the event. “Where it came from, where it is today, (and) where it’s going.”

Laguna Seca is a world-class raceway that hosts a number of sports cars and motorcycles events. While the name does technically mean “dry lake”, you wouldn’t really know it as it’s a very hilly place. So hilly that at the famous “corkscrew”, the cars drop 5.5 storeys in just 140 metres, and end up 10 storeys down at the exit. Since so many owners drive their Porsches to the race, parking is broken down into groups; classic 356 Speedsters over here, current GT cars over there, and so on.

And that’s just the parking lot.

Through the vendor area (powder blue and orange “Gulf” gear over here, silver “Martini” gear over there, Porsche parts one way, diecast models another) and over the Michelin bridge is the main nerve. You make your way slowly past the Silverstone Bar (a little love for an overseas track; not bad) and before you know it, you’re about to cross the very same strip of tarmac used by every possible Porsche race car you can think of to access the track. It’s not closed, either; there are racers passing right by, constantly, and it’s on you to avoid them as the security is surprisingly marginal.

They take to the track in seven groups, each group representing a different era of car, from the latest Cup and GT cars to the earliest 356 and 550 models. My favorite? The Group 2 “Werks” division, which features the flat-6 -8 and -12 monsters from the late 60s and early 70s; legendary cars like the Porsche 917, 908, and 904. It’s crazy; you have free access to walk through the paddock and the mind-boggling Chopard heritage display and many of those wild cars you see aren’t just showpieces; they’re here to race. This is a fullyfledged paddock with men carrying broken bumpers and

changing tire pressures, only they’re doing so on a classic Kremer 935 finished in the pink and white scheme of the Japanese Moda Goji Italiya clothing brand. It would eventually be taking to the track, as would the Wynn’ssponsored 962 you see over there, the Löwenbräu car over there, the Brumos-liveried GT3 Cup car at paddock entrance and the multicoloured Champion Porsche-sponsored 993 GT2—at the age of 12, I had a 1:18 diecast model of that one beside my bed—one aisle over. These are cars I’ve spent my life studying and now, here they were, right in front of my eyes and ready to light up the central-Californian tarmac.

When I first arrived and was greeted by a display including an as-used version of the Paris-Dakar 959, a RS Spyder racer in DHL yellow, and classic 718 RS Spyder racer, I scolded myself and my research for not revealing how huge this all was, how much of an assault on the senses. After a while, however, I realized that there is nothing I could have done—nothing at all—to prepare myself for this, and I proceeded to just enjoy the event.

It wasn’t just the cars or drivers in silo, though. It was the whole experience, the feeling that you were at the centre of all that mattered in the motorsport world at that moment. As I talked more to people at the event, though, it became clearer that it was a more tangible feeling than that. Nierop again:

“Being here as a driver, it is a certain pride that you’re part of that Porsche family, and I think that’s how everybody pretty much feels about it. You can’t do more of a competitive, agreeable, exciting, grandiose show than gettng everybody together,” he said. “We all are proud to have driven the product, and we all have a story to tell.”

Now I do, too.