Porsche 911 GT1 At The Goodwood Festival of Speed
The first Porsche 911 GT1, developed from a 911 (993) car, did its debut in 1996 and it was able to achieve a Le Mans class win plus a few other successes. In 1997 Porsche made revisions to its GT1 racer including the new 996 style front headlights that previewed the all-new 911 generation but the “Evo” car didn’t prove to be as fast as in 1996, killed by the dominance of Mercedes and McLaren.
So for the 1998 season they decided to develop a whole new car featuring a body-work and components more typical to traditional sports-prototypes. The car resembles a 996 series 911, but that’s about as far as the similarities go! As per the regulations it was necessary to built a single street-legal version of the car to be eligible to race in the FIA International GT championship.
It features a twin-turbo 3.2-litre flat-6 engine derived from the Porsche 962 one (slightly detuned compared to the 1996/1997 GT1s) producing around 550 hp at 7200 rpm and 630 Nm of torque.
At this year’s Goodwood Festival of Speed Porsche celebrates its 70th anniversary and they brought this GT1-98, chassis 003, which is the one that won the 1998 24h of Le Mans.
