Peter Falk – Porsche's Enduring
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www.porscheroadandrace.com Peter Falk – Porsche’s enduring engineer Published: 16th August 2017 By: Kieron Fennelly Online version: https://www.porscheroadandrace.com/peter-falk-porsches-enduring-engineer/ www.porscheroadandrace.com Peter Falk sits on the sill of the famous #23 Porsche 917 KH Coupé, winner of the 1970 Le Mans 24 Hours. On this occasion it is www.porscheroadandrace.com located in the Porsche Museum Workshop on 28 June 2010 In a 34-year career at Porsche, the influence of Peter Falk – Porsche’s enduring engineer, can be found throughout the air-cooled and transaxle model ranges, and extends even to the 986/996 generation. He was also team manager for many of Porsche’s Le Mans efforts and oversaw the company’s rise from class winner to crushing overall victory in 1970/71, repeating this performance through the 1980s. Peter Falk is one of those seminal Porsche figures who seem to have been around forever and it is hard to imagine that he retired from Weissach 24 years ago. Now in his ninth decade, he is still keen to participate in local Porsche functions and is always a highly popular personality at classic events. Porsche 904 at the Rallye Monte Carlo 1965 (from L-R): Rolf Wütherich (known as James www.porscheroadandrace.com Dean’s mechanic) and Peter Falk “My father was an archaeologist and I was born in Athens. My parents returned to Germany in 1939 and settled in Pforzheim [30 miles west of Stuttgart]. After my studies, I joined Daimler Benz as an apprentice.” Although he had the opportunity to become a senior engineer at Mercedes, he turned this down, preferring an altogether less prestigious, but potentially more exciting sports car builder on the other side of Stuttgart. “I loved sports cars,” he said “and Mercedes cars were all too big and heavy to inspire me.” The appeal of Porsche’s neat 356 Coupé, not to mention its racing derivatives was obvious, and having presented himself at Zuffenhausen, the experienced but youthful 26-year old Falk was recruited straight into the experimental department, reporting initially to Helmut Rombold, and later to Helmuth Bott. “In those days, it was still a small company and production and competition cars were built alongside each other, so development overlapped. My tasks involved the 356s and RSKs.” Soon he was involved in testing the 901 (911 to be). He acknowledges that the model’s handling difficulties were not ironed out before the launch despite a summer of gruelling testing at the Nürburgring in 1963, and development continued for another year and more. Life at Porsche involved an immense amount of practical testing and Falk had to get used to driving huge mileages, something he says he never minded, indeed he was described as a highly skilled wheelman. He also recalls the frustrations of testing: “We had a 904 at Ehra- Lessien (VW’s proving ground) in late 1964, where I was with Herbert Linge and Colin Davies. We did 2500km in a couple of days then the gearbox seized. A year later, we took a 906 there again and we found it cornered faster than the 904 (1.24g to 1.10g), but we couldn’t complete the planned 1000km test because of oil starvation.” To establish the 911’s sporting credentials and with minimal preparation, he and Herbert Linge drove an almost standard car to an unprecedented fifth place in the 1965 Monte Carlo Rally. Falk is characteristically modest about this: “Linge drove all the special stages. I did www.porscheroadandrace.com the in-between driving.” Driver Herbert Linge (right) and Peter Falk (left) with the Porsche 911 2.0, together they drove in the Rallye Monte-Carlo, January 1965 Sometimes testing could be particularly dispiriting, for example at Monza in December 1968. Falk was supervising the testing of a pair of 908s for the forthcoming Daytona race, but both cars crashed in the rain and burned out. He had to return and explain this to his boss, and so a pair of new 908s had to be hastily assembled for trials to continue at a freezing Weissach. Nevertheless, Falk, a solid exponent of the Bott ethos of sticking to the job till it was done, was rewarded by appointment to the head of vehicle testing in April 1969. www.porscheroadandrace.com Peter Falk paints a white arrow on the track surface on the famous Monza banking ahead of a brace of world championship speed and endurance records. The drivers were Jo Siffert, Dieter Spoerry, Charles Vögele and Rico Steinemann, and they set these records driving a 2- litre 911 R, rotating driver duties continuously over a 96-hour period in 1967 Porsche enthusiasts will recognise Peter Falk though above all, as the mainstay of numerous racing teams and in particular the company’s attempts at Le Mans. At Zuffenhausen in 1966, Ferdinand Piëch had become motorsport chief and it was immediately apparent that the von Hanstein regime, which had concentrated on visibility and class wins, was being replaced by something far more ambitions. Piëch wanted to win Le Mans outright, and his energy and personality would galvanise Porsche’s racing effort as never before. Ferry Porsche’s nephew had his eyes on his uncle’s job and competition success was his chosen weapon. The space frame 906 was the first of a series of sports racers which would culminate in perhaps the greatest sports racing car of all time, the 917. www.porscheroadandrace.com Le Mans 24 Hours, 29 September 1968: the #31 Porsche 908 LH of Jo Siffert and Hans Herrmann is pushed into position before the start by Peter Falk (front) and Hans Mezger at the rear Famously, although it was a prototype, Porsche still had to build 25 to satisfy the FIA. Falk www.porscheroadandrace.com remembers the day in late March 1969, with all twenty-five 917s aligned in a perfect row at Zuffenhausen for the FIA inspectors’ approbation. It is now known that few of the cars were strictly race ready. “But they were all complete,” says Falk, “and they were all driveable even if they had 911 brakes and other production components.” Even by today’s standards, the 917 is a dauntingly big car. “Piëch said openly to the inspectors – drive one, any one – but none of them accepted his offer!” Le Mans 24 Hours, 15 June 1969: the #14 works 917 LH driven by Rolf Stommelen and Kurt Ahrens. At the rear consulting his note book is Peter Falk (incidentally, Peter Falk was shown as an alternate driver on the entry list for this car, but never actually drove in the race) With the 917 duly approved, it went to Le Mans for the 1969 race. The 917’s subsequent aerodynamic woes have been well documented, and Peter Falk simply confirms that it was www.porscheroadandrace.com the John Wyer team that devised the modification to the tail which stabilised the car at high speed, though Porsche had also reached the same conclusion. Nürburgring 1000km, 1973: 911 Carrera RSR 28 (prototype 3.0) with Peter Falk, and to his right, Wolfgang Berger www.porscheroadandrace.com Nürburgring 1000km, 1973: (from L-R) Willi Kauhsen, George Follmer, Peter Falk, Norbert Singer From 1973 as head of testing for production cars, his attention focused on the new transaxle range. He explained how Porsche adapted to front-engined, transaxle format, “Fuhrmann pushed the 928 because in the early seventies it did appear that the 911 would not meet forthcoming federal emissions and safety legislation.” Falk respected Fuhrmann as a fine engineer, but it was a direction he and his colleagues would follow with a heavy heart. “Even then, the 911 was the image of Porsche and we didn’t want to stop the development.” But good professionals they were, and Falk’s group got on with the necessary proving of the transaxle prototypes. www.porscheroadandrace.com Testing the 924 in the Algerian desert over Easter 1980 – Peter Falk is on the left Fuhrmann gave way to Peter Schutz and in a dramatic change of strategy, the 911’s development was revived. “Schutz was a salesman,” opined Falk the engineer. “He just wanted to sell cars, but he made one brilliant decision, and that was to return to Le Mans.” New to the company, Schutz went to Weissach where he was shown the 924 GTs, precursors of the 944 Turbo, being prepared for the company’s low key Le Mans entry. He asked whether they would win only to be told that a class victory was the best they could hope for. Schutz responded, famously, that Porsche would not go to the 24 hours unless it would win and told the assembled engineers to show him something that could win. Peter Falk had an idea, “I suggested we could use the 936 with the 2.7 engine we had developed for the North American CART series.” The engineers converted the engine from methanol to run on petrol and in a fairy tale www.porscheroadandrace.com ending, one of the two 936/81s finished first at Le Mans driven by Ickx and Bell. “It opened the way for us in Europe in Group C with the 956 and the 962,” said Peter Falk. Christening the 956 on the occasion of the official roll-out at the Weissach race department in 1982 (from L-R): Norbert Singer, Klaus Bischof, Horst Reitter, unknown, Peter Falk and Jürgen Barth (test driver), the last two are unknown In 1981, Porsche’s competition programme expanded again, having been scaled back by Fuhrmann, and as a sign of its new importance, Bott made Peter Falk head of the racing department.