1991 Carrera Cup Contender
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www.porscheroadandrace.com 1991 Carrera Cup contender Published: 5th April 2017 By: Glen Smale Online version: https://www.porscheroadandrace.com/1991-carrera-cup-contender/ Porsche 964 Carrera Cup waits in the pit garage between outings at Oulton Park, March 2017 A bit of history It had long been Porsche’s goal to participate in motorsport at varying levels, and in an effort to nurture new talent from amongst its customer racing base, a new customer racing series was being planned. 1990 marked the birth of the one-make motor racing series which has today become the envy of the motoring industry, the Porsche Carrera Cup. This year www.porscheroadandrace.com marks the 28th anniversary of the world’s best known one-make race series, and our story involves a familiar race car that was a 1991 Carrera Cup contender. Mel Spear’s Porsche 964 Carrera Cup getting warmed up at Oulton Park, March 2017 Following the successful introduction of the roadgoing Porsche 944 Turbo in 1985, Porsche began the development of a race car based on the Type 951 which lead to the Porsche 944 Turbo Cup series. This, the first one-make race series in the company’s history, was run in Germany between 1986-1989 using the transaxle 944 Turbos, and at first consisted of seven races, rising to ten in its final year. www.porscheroadandrace.com The sleek lines of the 964 Carrera Cup are well illustrated from this angle at Oulton Park, March 2017 The series proved so successful, that Porsche expanded it to run as a separate regional championship in France from 1987 to 1990. But there was a problem – the 944’s replacement was due at the end of the 1991 model year, and so a decision had to be made as to which model would continue to compete in the one-make race series. In order to give the series a future and to ensure continuity, Porsche management called Herbert Linge out of retirement to run the show. “The idea after the 944 Turbo Cup was to continue with the 928 and I told them immediately if you want to do it with the 928, I am not going to do it,” Herbert Linge recalled. The 928 was never intended to be a race car, it was too big and heavy, and would cost too much to make it competitive on the world stage. “I told them if I am going to do it, I will do it with www.porscheroadandrace.com the 911,” he said firmly. Introduced in 1989 (the year of the 911’s 25th anniversary), the 964 Carrera 4 was a significant new model for the company, but the 4-wheel drive system was deemed unsuitable for the company’s racing series. Manufactured alongside the Carrera 4 at the same time was the more traditional rear-wheel drive Carrera 2, but this model’s launch was only planned for a year later, in the hope that it would not detract from potential sales of the Carrera 4. The 1990 season was the first season that saw the 911-based model become the pillar on which the Porsche Carrera Cup series has been established. The 1991 Porsche 964 Carrera Cup makes its way into the pit lane for another run at Oulton Park, March 2017 www.porscheroadandrace.com The Carrera Cup story In 1989, the first Carrera Cup race car was built by Porsche Motorsport based on the Carrera 2 production car, and was powered by a 3.6-litre air-cooled, twin-plug boxer engine. The 911 Carrera Cup was fitted with lightweight Speedline alloy wheels, a lightened clutch, a Matter roll cage, and the driver was given a Recaro racing seat. Slightly modified ignition electronics and a modified exhaust system (although it retained the standard catalytic converters) were just a few of the changes to the otherwise largely stock sports car. The Carrera Cup race cars retained the standard ABS system but this was slightly modified to cope with the rigours of racing. Porsche race engineer, Roland Kussmaul went to work on making the car into a purebred racing machine by discarding all carpeting, sound-deadening material, and the interior fan. The blueprinted engine gave the car a 15bhp power increase over the production model which seemed rather moderate on paper, but being 230kg lighter, performance was very lively. www.porscheroadandrace.com The Porsche 964 Carrera Cup is fitted with lightweight racing seats Power was distributed to the rear wheels by means of a five-speed gearbox with shortened third, fourth and fifth gear ratios and a limited slip differential. Modified suspension kinematics, stiffer and shorter springs and adjustable anti-roll bar ensured race-like handling, while compared to its road-going sibling, the 911 Carrera Cup sat 55mm lower on the road. www.porscheroadandrace.com From this angle it can be seen how low the Porsche 964 Carrera Cup sits to the ground In order to ensure that the cars only ended up in the hands of genuine drivers who intended to race in the Cup series, teams were required to lodge a DM25,000 deposit with the company, refundable on the completion of eighty percent of that year’s races, a requirement that has continued more or less unchanged to this day. Although Roland Asch won three of the ten rounds in the German Carrera Cup that first year, it was Porsche-stalwart Olaf Manthey who took the first Carrera Cup crown with just two victories in 1990. With the popularity of Porsche customer racing on the increase in 1991, the German Carrera Cup calendar once again comprised ten rounds, three of which were supporting races for the Formula 1 Championship. Approximately 40 cars lined up on the grid for each race, attracting both professional as well as aspiring amateur drivers. This time with six victories from seven starts, Roland Asch made no mistake in securing the title www.porscheroadandrace.com with Wolfgang Land as runner-up (Land had finished in third place the year before), while Jürgen von Gartzen took third place in the 1991 German series. Massimo Sigala puts our feature car through its paces in period during the Carrera Cup race at the Nürburgring, April 1991 Ever since the start of the one-make series, Porsche has enjoyed strong growth in this sector and they have turned this into a financially lucrative operation. In the first year of the Porsche Carrera Cup, just 50 identical cars were produced for the 1990 season, while in the second year of the competition, this increased to 120 cars. By comparison, this number has increased to 170 Cup cars (2016) which are produced for different one-make series all around the world in regional Carrera Cups, Supercup, Intercontinental GT Challenge amongst others. www.porscheroadandrace.com Our feature car: 1991 Carrera Cup #WP0ZZZ96ZM5409111 In 2001, Melvin Spear, 964 RS register secretary at the Porsche Club GB, was the proud and happy owner of a 964 Carrera 4 with no intention of selling his prized possession. Likewise, the owner of a certain 1991 964 Carrera Cup racer was also quite happy with his lot, and did not feel up to selling his race car. So, you might ask, how did the Cup car come to change hands when no-one was planning to sell? “An instructor at Goodwood decided I’d got to the limit of the C4 and asked if I had ever considered an RS,” Spear recalled. “I heard about this Carrera Cup and the seller worked a mile down the road from where I live, and so the deal was more or less done over the phone. He was really into American hot rods and muscle cars, so I’m not really sure why he bought it. I had a very quick sale on the C4 after a lady from Aberdeen saw it at Le Mans 2001, and she still has it,” he added. The distinctive original colour scheme of our featured Porsche 964 Carrera Cup makes this www.porscheroadandrace.com one of the most attractive cars on circuit at Oulton Park, March 2017 Porsche Carrera chassis number WP0ZZZ96ZM5409111 was delivered to German Porsche dealer Max Moritz on 27 February 1991. Research showed Spear that the car was driven in the German Carrera Cup by the Argentinean driver, Oscar Larrauri, who finished fifth in the 1991 Carrera Cup driving #9111, after competing in only five of the ten races. The car then also raced in the 1992 and 1993 Porsche Carrera Cup series, before competing in the German Clubsport series, the Pirelli Euro Trophy, RS Cup and the Kumho Ferrari-Porsche Challenge between the years 1994-1998. This car was imported to the UK some time later from Thomas Schmitz of Germany, but very little of the car’s history was known at the time by either the owner or Melvin Spear. Spear had the car on the road for a couple of years, as the car was taxed and MOT’d, but as he said, “You’d hit a bump and you were on the other side of the road, but being road registered was useful when running in a rebuilt engine.” www.porscheroadandrace.com Our feature Porsche 964 Carrera Cup leaves the pits for another run at Oulton Park, March 2017 Although the car was painted Grand Prix white when the current owner acquired it in 2001, it was returned to its original 1991 white-red-green livery later. In the early days, Spear admits to having taken the car out about once a month on track days, covering about 1000-1500 race miles per annum.