More often than not, victory lane at Daytona has been the property of the race cars from Zuffenhausen. For one engineer, Daytona was important as a proving ground for 30 year's worth of his ideas. Norbert Singer first came to Daytona for the debut of the 911 Carrera RSR in 1973. The rest, as the clich goes, is history.
ec: Going back over your long association with Daytona, can you provide some thoughts and recollections of those years?
NS: My first Daytona was in 1973 with the two 911 RSRs, one for Peter Gregg and the other for the Penske team. The RSR became a very big success. What I knew of the track was that there was quite a lot of banking and that the conditions there were hard.
ec: How did you prepare the RSR for the 1973 24-hour race at Daytona?
NS: We had an engine which was quite reliable already, so we didn't do that many long-endurance tests, except for running at Paul Ricard. When we developed the RSR it was already November, and there wasn't much time to prepare for the race at the end of January.
ec: Did you ship the RSRs over here with the thought of winning the overall race?NS: Not at all. We just went to win the GT class, but because the RSR had not received the homologation yet from the FIA as a GT car, we were put in with the prototypes. We were lucky the prototypes ran into problems. The Mirage was very fast as was the Matra, and then the Joest 908 had a fuel problem-I think with the fuel tank as they had to refuel every 20 minutes or so. The other GT cars also had problems.
The first RSR was a very good car: very light, not hard on the brakes and had good speed. The Penske team had a lot of experience winning races in America so we spent more time with Peter Gregg and the Brumos team. They did very well with that RSR and the later 3.0 RSR, too. I think the RSR won Daytona two or three times. Although we [the Porsche factory] were not the official entry in 1973, the race was very important to us.
ec: What were some of the lessons you took back to Weissach? Was Daytona something else to add in terms of your preparing the next generation of race cars?
NS: Later yes, but not in 1973. Daytona was the first race of the season. The engine, the gearbox, suspension, everything was reliable, even under the hard conditions of Daytona. We had to gain performance on other racetracks through the season. By April, we were asking for more power and tires; that's it. Because of the bodywork we couldn't do very much as it was a homologated GT car-unless we wanted to run in the prototype class.
ec: That brings us to the 935 and the decision to come to Daytona with the Martini team as a factory entry. How did that come about?
NS: We raced in 1976 in the World Championship of Makes. I think it was also the idea of bringing the 935 to America. Introducing it at Daytona was the best place to show the potential of these cars.
ec: Unfortunately it wasn't one of your better results.
NS: True, but I think those who were there in Daytona saw the potential. I remember quite well: We had the first hard impact on the wall after 3 hours due to a tire failure. We had to repair it and it took over half an hour or whatever. I think we had four mechanics and two engineers; that was the whole factory entry.
We had no one for time keeping, so I went up to Judy Stropus-who was time keeping in the next pit-and asked, "Where are we on the board?" She said, "You are in 43rd and 22 laps behind." It was an enormous gap to make up. It was dark when we finished the repair and we raced through the whole night and it was unbelievable. It wasn't necessary to see any starting numbers to identify our 935, you just saw the car flying, passing other cars. In the morning when the sun came up we were three or four laps behind the leading car. You can't imagine what Jacky Ickx and Jochen Mass had done during the night
ec: Lots of flame from the turbo?
NS: Lots of flame from the turbo! We could see its headlights; when we saw it coming and passing all the other cars so fast we knew 'this is our car, this could be easy.' In the morning we were in second and felt we could win. Then Jochen Mass had another tire failure and he couldn't make it back to the pits, so our race was over.
ec: I remember the car sitting on the bank missing a rear tire and wheel. Do you think that without the failures you could have won the race?
NS: Yes, easily. We were catching up to the leading car, the Kremer car, and the race had hours to go. They ran into problems during a pit stop. A wheel nut got tight and they couldn't change the wheel. We ran up to the next pit and helped him fix it. Then they had gearbox and clutch problems-before noon, I think.
ec: It's amazing that you had such a small crew for the 935, especially when you compare the size of race operations today.
NS: Yes, the other engineer was Valentine Schaffer; one of the mechanics was Klaus Bischof who now runs the Porsche Museum. There are so many things that have changed in order to race today.
ec: The factory participation went away for a few years while private teams carried the banner with the 935. You returned in 1981 with the 924 effort.
NS: Yes, we had several cars that had been sent over. Jo Hoppen was running one of our Le Mans cars for Al Holbert and asked if we would come to assist. What did surprise me was that Rick Mears was Holbert's co-driver. A famous Indy 500 winner in a 924. He was a nice guy and very professional. The 924s had problems with their engines
Overall the car was easy to drive because it had near perfect 50/50 weight distribution. In principal, if it had a better engine the 924 could have been a wonderful race car. We wanted the 924s to finish if possible.
One team was getting ready to take everything back to the garage and I went up to their pit to ask what problem they had. The car had lost a cylinder. The drivers had left and the mechanics were putting away their tools. Some of our mechanics from Weissach came up and started the engine and then cut out the one cylinder as we had done at Le Mans with one of our three cars. They crew chief found one of the drivers and the car finished the race.
ec: Let's jump to 1984 with the introduction of the 962 and the big question with the choice of drivers for the car. Now that years have passed, were you in favor of the choice of Mario and Michael Andretti?
NS: I had no interest in that at all during that time. I don't remember who was involved in the driver selection. But I think the idea was to introduce the 962 in America with very famous drivers-not just have it go there and win the race. I think, in principal, the idea was not so bad to have Mario Andretti. It was also the first time I met him
ec: You didn't met Mario or Michael at Le Mans in 1983 when they drove the Kremer 956 to third place behind your two Rothmans cars?
NS: No, I didn't, but I was surprised at how Mario was about the job. He was very famous at the time, even more so than Rick Mears, what with running at Indianapolis and F1. It was easy to work with Mario, he was a real professional. When you started working with him, everything else was forgotten. He just concentrated on the car and nothing else. It was a real pleasure working with him. When he later came to Le Mans to drive for us in 1988, it was again, a pleasure. It was a real good weekend with him. We didn't win the race but working with him was a wonderful time.
ec: About 962-001's performance at Daytona that year: The car had pole and then quickly built up a lead on the rest of the field.
NS: Everybody expected this car would be fast. Actually it wasn't that much faster but it also wasn't reliable. We did a little bit of testing, but Daytona is 24 hours and you must have a reliable car-we didn't. The single-turbo IMSA engine was new; the Group C cars used a twin-turbo four-valve engine. The IMSA car required us to make a new body and tail. It is difficult to test these things in Europe because there isn't a track with banking like Daytona.
ec: Was the Daytona experience able to help with further development on the 962?
NS: Yes, it was. The most important thing was to move the front axles 12cm forward to have the pedals behind the center of the front axle for safety reasons. This helped future development because 1 or 2 years later FIA took the same regulations and we already had a chassis made which met them.
ec: Your next appearance?
NS: I was with Brumos at Sebring in 1993 with a new car we had built based on a 911 Turbo. The car was the Le Mans GT. We won the class at Sebring and it lead that year at Le Mans until we had an accident. Hurley Haywood was one of the drivers. Later the GT was sold to the Larbre Team in France. Brumos was building a new version of a GT that had a larger engine, which it entered for Daytona. Larbre also entered the original Le Mans GT and we went over to assist with both cars.
ec: Back then, we were sitting on the pit wall and two cars were sitting side by side, and I said, "I've been looking at these two cars now for three days and they look the same but are completely different." And you said "Well, they (Brumos) started with a production chassis, and I started more or less with a production chassis."
NS: More or less [laughs]. Brumos had an engine problem but the Larbre GT had a good run, finishing second in the race. It really was a perfect GT car because it was lightweight and balanced. The Le Mans GT also won a 1,000km race with Larbre.
ec: You were quite busy with the GT-1 program in the FIA and for Le Mans, yet you made a good showing at Daytona in 1998 with the Rohr team.
NS: Yes, the Rohr team had done very well in America and it was a good decision to go to Daytona: finished second. The Larbre team also had a GT-1 and finished third, which was a good result for us.
ec: You had Allan McNish in the Rohr GT-1. Was this a result of his drive at Laguna Seca in the FIA race in 1997?
NS: McNish was signed to drive for us at Le Mans that year so it was an easy decision. We had a very easy race, and I recall the car was not too difficult to set up. A change of spring rates to something stiffer and not much else. We had five drivers for the car, including Danny Sullivan. There was a large crowd that year and a large number of the WSC (World Sports Cars) prototypes. With the regulations I didn't think we would win over a Ferrari 333 or R&S, but we came close.
ec: The mention of the WSC brings to mind the controversy of Porsche withdrawing from Daytona in 1995 over the IMSA rules changes after the test days. History has given the TWR-Porsche project a new life after back-to-back wins at Le Mans.
NS: Our WSC car needed a lot of development before the race, and having the air intakes restricted even further made the car almost undriveable. For some reason it was assumed we were hiding the car's potential and this wasn't true.
It is very difficult to build a car from two ideas. An example of this was the Lola Porsche for the Champion team. It took some time to set up, and we had a lot of problems because a car like this will always be a compromise. You don't need a lot of doubts at Daytona; the idea is to reduce the number of doubts. The Lola had many problems in the 2001 race and was more successful in 2002 because of more testing. Champion finished fourth that year. I think this would have been the same in 1995 for our WSC car.
ec: There have been relatively few track changes at Daytona during the past decades. The most obvious being the chicane to slow down the cars. However, there have been a great deal of changes to the cars and teams that take to the banks at the beach. What are the most obvious to you?
NS: You always needed a lot of power in the 24 hours and reliability. The biggest change came when downforce was introduced. This was not so critical in the infield but made a big difference on the banking. Because of the back straight, there is one long-banking corner, and the start and finish line is quite fast. Tires became much more important after downforce.
ec: This may be one area where, considering the amount of tire failures in the past, race-car development far outpaced tire development.
NS: Yes, tire failure was the big thing, especially on the right rear. There were no testing possibilities in Europe for checking what the load from the banking was. Michelin and Dunlop had simulators but tires on a testing machine are one thing and the circuit is very different, as you also have a side force and not just vertical load. In a normal situation the tires wouldn't have a problem. If you have a little puncture and/or pressure loss then it's hopeless; you have destroyed the tire completely within seconds.
ec: I will wrap this up with the standard questions. The best car and your favorite memory of Daytona.
NS: The biggest success was of course in 1973, winning with a production car-but this was just an entrance. But I think Andretti and the 962 in 1984 was very remarkable; for me, a very good memory. Of course, the race was not so long for us that year. But with Mario and with that car I think it was a really good thing