Michael Riley's Blog: Scenes from Porsche Rennsport Reunion V at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca

Thursday, October 1, 2015

Scenes from Porsche Rennsport Reunion V at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca

All photos courtesy of Porsche AG.

Officially, it’s billed as the largest gathering of Porsche racing car and drivers in the world, though the Stuttgart automaker also likes to call it the “fastest class reunion in the world.” Held roughly every three (or four) years, Rennsport Reunion brings together the Porsche faithful for three days of vintage (and current) racing, car shows and camaraderie, and last weekend’s Rennsport Reunion V drew a record-setting crowd of 57,531 spectators to Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca.

For three days, roughly 320 Porsche models took to the track in club racing, vintage racing and IMSA Porsche GT3 Cup Challenge events, while another 75 historic models were displayed in the Chopard Heritage Display and over 2,000 spectator Porsches filled the parking areas. At the conclusion of Saturday’s on-track events, over 100 cars were shown, Le Mans start style, in the Concours on the Pit Lane, an event won by the Porsche 908 LH owned by The Revs Institute.

From L to R: Richard Attwood, Gerard Larousse, Vic Elford, Jochen Mass, Jacky Ickx, Hans Hermann, Juergen Barth, Hurley Haywood, Derek Bell, Gijs van Lennep, Nick Tandy, Hans-Joachim Stuck.

Autograph sessions allowed visitors to meet many of the 11 Le Mans winners on hand, ranging in age from 25 (Earl Bamber, who took victory with Nick Tandy and Nico Hulkenberg in the 2015 24 Hours of Le Mans) to 87 (Hans Hermann, who won the 1970 race with Richard Attwood). Of the event’s significance, Hermann said, “It is important for the future to keep these memories alive. The young drivers need to know how it was back then when the steering wheels were wooden and we had no computers like today.”

The Saturday afternoon Concours in the Pit Lane.

Jacky Ickx, who’d first win for Porsche at Le Mans in 1976 with co-driver Gijs van Lennep, was also in attendance. In 1969, Ickx drove a John Wyer Ford GT40 Mk. 1 to victory on the Circuit de la Sarthe, beating the Porsche of Hans Hermann by less than 400 feet and a few seconds. Decades later, Hermann jokes about the 1969 defeat, saying, “Ferdinand Piech was so annoyed that for 1970 he built a super engine and we then won with it.”

The Concours in the Pit Lane-winning Porsche 908 LH takes to the track.

And win they did. The 1970 race marked the first time that Porsche earned an overall win at Le Mans, and in the years since, the brand has racked up an additional 15 overall victories, more than any other automaker. Porsche’s record is even more remarkable when one considers that, as a factory team, the brand was absent from 1999-2012.

The 2016 Porsche 911 Carrera.

Porsche also used Rennsport Reunion V to debut its latest 911 Carrera and Carrera S models, in both coupe and cabriolet form. Though the timing of the next Rennsport Reunion (VI) is still up in the air, Gill Campbell, Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca CEO and general manager was quoted as saying, “Let’s do this again in four years.”