John Fitzpatrick shares fond memories of the Porsche 935
When almost 50 per cent of the races you’ve competed in were in Porsche 911/935 variations, the new 935 track car revives good memories...
Isee that deliveries of the new Porsche 935 track car have started. Porsche is building just 77 of these beauties that pay homage to the 935 of the Seventies which formed such a large part of the grids in the World Endurance and IMSA series. The cars are being sold at close to $800,000 each although I have seen one on offer for $1.7m from an early buyer. They are available in various colour schemes that pay homage to the cars that raced in the day and I am proud to say that one of the schemes is based on the Dick Barbour Sachs-sponsored car that I drove to the IMSA Championship in 1980.
The 935 race cars in the day were based on the road-going 930 Turbo. I was lucky enough to have one of the early 930s and it was a sensational road car. The racing version first appeared at Silverstone in 1976 and was the class of the field, but succumbed to problems that allowed Tom Walkinshaw and myself to take the win in the Hermetite BMW. However, the 935 in all its variations dominated that class of racing until the 956 first appeared in 1982.
The ultimate development of the 935 was the Kremer K4, built around an aluminium tube frame chassis originally designed by Porsche for the 1978 Moby Dick. The factory Moby Dick drawings were used to build two K4s and Joest also built two cars using the same chassis design. One of the Kremer K4s that was built for Ted Field’s Interscope Team was recently sold at auction for $900,000, which felt low, but the car only competed in one race without success.
When I formed my own race team in San Diego in 1981, I bought the 935 K3 from Kremer that I had driven for him in 1980 and, with a few modifications, campaigned it in the IMSA Series. IMSA had introduced its GTP rules to break up the domination of the Porsches and for 1982 I needed something better. My sponsor was a Porsche fan and he didn’t want us to race a GTP car, so we bought the K4 from Kremer and set about making it more competitive. We achieved this and won several races ahead of the GTP cars. It is now sitting in the showroom at Bruce Canepa’s facility in Santa Cruz, California, available for sale at around $3m.
Genuine Porsche-built 935s are selling for around $2m and provide a most exhilarating driving experience. They take a little while to find the knack of maintaining the turbo boost, but once mastered it is amazing. A trick I discovered very early on was not to use full boost on sections of a track where there was a lot of on/off throttle needed. With less boost the throttle response was far better and the car was more stable. This was particularly advantageous at the start where cars were bunched together. I first drove a Turbo in 1976 with Bob Wollek for the Kremer team. Bob had it all worked out and shared the technique with me. I kept it to myself.
I hope to see one of the new Porsche 935s at a track day, so I can try to persuade the owner to allow me to drive it and relive some good memories.