Group C is generally regarded as a golden era of
world sportscar racing. Spanning 1982 to
1993, it was a time of legendary drivers, teams
and racecars. And one car stands out in
record books of that time – the Porsche 956 and
its younger sister, the 962C.
The 956 first appeared at Silverstone in 1982 and
the last 962 iteration of the model finally
retired from racing in 1994. The stats over its
lifetime are impressive: six Le Mans wins in
succession and seven overall; five FIA world
championships as well as three IMSA titles and
five Daytona 24 hour victories.
These days Porsche 956/962s are a common
sight at Group C revival race at historic
meetings throughout the UK, Europe and the
USA. However, they are a very rare sight in New
Zealand.
Auckland-based Classic Revival is going some
way to putting that right, though.
Pride of place in its workshop is an ex-Brun
Motorsport, Hydro Aluminium liveried Porsche
962C that was raced in the 1989 World Sportscar
Championship and at the Le Mans 24 hours in
1989 and 1990.
Walter Brun’s team was based in Switzerland and
was a mainstay of Porsche’s customer racing
programme in the Group C era, starting with a
956 in 1983 and winning the world championship
outright in 1986. It also had success in the US,
finishing second at the Daytona 24 hours in 1987
and third in 1989.
As well as driving himself, Brun employed some of
the best sportscar drivers in the world at that
time to pilot his racecars, including Stefan Bellof,
Oscar Larrauri, Hans-Joachim Stuck and
Derek Bell.
P R I VAT E E N T E R P R I S E
With the Porsche factory withdrawing from
full-time Group C competition at the end of 1987
and offering equal support and development to
the customer teams including long-time customer
team Joest, Kremer and RLR, Brun decided it
Photo: Richard Opie
would need something special to compete against
the factory teams from Nissan, Toyota, Jaguar
and Sauber Mercedes.
The team developed its own chassis with John
Thompson at TC Prototypes in the UK. It
addressed two of the Porsche monocoque’s
shortcomings – the lack of rigidity compared to
the full carbon chassis of its competitors, and
safety – with a mixture of carbon fibre and
aluminium honeycomb. Porsche engineers
contest that it was stiffer, but not that it was
cheaper!
The rest of the car was more or less the same as
the factory built 962. In total eight cars were
built by Brun; 962-001BM first appeared in early
1987, with 002BM being completed by midyear.
Both of these racecars were powered by
the early 2.8-litre air/water engines (water cooled
heads with air-cooled barrels) running on Motronic
1.2 engine management. The other six chassis
had the later factory spec 3-litre fully water-cooled
engines running on Bosch Motronic 1.7 engine
management.
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