That makes the video 1000 times better hahahaha

I would contend that Group C was not madness in its initial concept, but morphed towards that over time. I was just starting my mechanical engineering degree when it came out and the concept was fairly simple. Anything goes along as it fits into the silhouette except how much fuel you have. The idea was to drive innovation in motor sport. It started to come unstuck with Sauber, who had the massive V8 twin turbo they could wind up for qualification and getting to the front and then dial back for fuel economy. In a way it did all the groundwork for what Audi later did with diesels. But that also means that Sauber was innovating. The problem with Group C was it allowed those with enough money to out innovate the others. In a way that's motorsport at the top levels. Its as much about who can out innovate the rest rather than who has the best driver. AND ITS ALWAYS BEEN THAT WAY.

I hear Porsche, BMW, Ferrari will go back to Le Mans from 2023 -2024..

Talking of Gran Turismo, the Strassenversion is now on GT7 - it's not quite as effective as the track version but it can be tuned at least

@@BOABModels I'm looking forward to getting my hands on GT7, need to get my hands on a playstation though first haha

I agree, some of the greatest cars ever made in my opinion

Well the top le mans cars of the late 90s and early 2000s are maybe the most revolutionary sports cars ever built. They're so revolutionary that today manufacturers still produce hypercars in the same style. Pagani is a good example.

Include the Ferrari F50 GT in that because that is a BEAST

@@Gangsta_Playz more appropriately the maserati mc12

Totally agree. It's unfortunate that the politically driven rule makers then proceeded to ruin things. Again.

BMW LM also had it happen.

@@iandc7050 oh yeh, not quite as perfect of a flying flip but wayyyyy more scary in an open top car :|

Also that flying car at monza that almost clipped audi r8's rear wing

Sauber had a flight in the 80s aswell

@David van den Boom at the Mulsanne crest in 1985

that was what I was initially hoping from lmh but oh well, atleast we have a decent amount of teams nows

@@askeladden450 i like that lmdh at least have unique looks to them. DPI and lmp all looked like they were stamped out of the same car factory.

This a very odd take, because its litterally the opposite. Group GT1 was intended to race sports cars, yes. But that changed, when Porsche created the 911 GT1 for the 1996 season. After that, it was essentially a prototype in everything, except name. And unless you were the Sultan of Brunai, you couldn't buy any of them. So all in this is a very odd comment.

@@Orcawhale1 odd if you're too stupid to understand nuance and subtlety sure.

Lol, I think it was easier to see on at the racetrack, than the road version on streets

Porsche did something like that at Petit Le Mans in 2018

i would have a merc clk lm 98 for todays wec :)

GT1 was the downloadable car of the NFS series game Porsche Unleashed. Like you, whenever I come across GT1 name I always think of that livery. It's just awesome.

I’m partial to the Lancia/Martini Liveries. Rally Icon and TIMELESS

Thanks! Really glad you enjoyed it

A tribute to engineering really though

To finish first, first you must finish.

Not really: they did 4th and 5th in quali. You could say that of the 1995 McLaren F1 GTR which was 10s a lap slower than the prototypes it toppled, but certainly not of the 911 GT1 98', which was 1-2s slower over a lap compared to CLK LM & GT-One, over a 11km track. But if your technology can't last the 24h, you lost either way.

Yup, Merc pounded the snot out of them everywhere else (WEC and IMSA).

The 911 GT1 was really quick. It was only just behind the Mercedes CLK LM and Toyota GT One

"loads of them" and CLK GTR don't really work in one sentence

There is no homologation version of the 1998 Mercedes (with a V8 engine) either. Both Porsche and Mercedes built 25 homologation cars of their 1997 version.

​@@X8X8X8X8X8X8X8X8X8XThere is one CLK LM road car

@@Jusuff Oh, yes, you are correct.

Or maybe the Furai obviously

The LMP2000, such a shame it never got the chance to race ... 😞

You're very welcome! Glad you enjoyed!

It's more complicated than that... 1. Group C was already dying of a slow death when the FIA brought that 3.5 liter rule in 1990. That's a thing which isn't often said... First of all, when the FIA created Group A, Group B, and Group C in 1982 things didn't go as planned. The FIA assumed that a Group B circuit racing would rise: that didn't happened. Which is why you got kind of a jump from Group 5 in the 1970s and early 1980s to GT1 in the GT circuit racing top class in Europe, and see some cars looking like touring cars in the 1980s IMSA GTO and SCCA Trans-Am. It's weird. It's also why they changed the name "world endurance championship" to "World Sports Prototype Championship" in 1986. But Group C had been used in "DTM" (well, DRM actually, but it's the same championship) up until 1985. It wasn't used anymore, been replaced by group A and than some DTM evolutionary rules. The BDRS SC was already moving away from C2 because some races had 9 competitors. That championship replaced thundersport... The interseries started to have Formula 2 and 3000 readapted, replaced some Group C and Can-am cars. By 1989, in the world sports car championship : the Sauber C9 that won was based on the Sauber C8, dating from 1985. The Porsche 962 dated from 1983-84. The Jaguar XJR-9 was evolved from a project dating from 1985. So the FIA wanted to shake things up in Group C to make the cars more modern, reduce cost in F1, and bring a world touring car series on crack by using the same engine all around... It didn't work as expected: too many teams tried in F1 and not enough in sports cars. Meanwhile, the cost of engines skyrocketed. The Alfa Romeo 164 procar was weirdly great to see, but that gone nowhere because nobody was interested. The intention were good. On paper the plan seemed great. Even how it was implemented had some good effects. They just didn't expect that much investment in F1 by teams during a recession. They also didn't expect the news sportcars to be that lacking in endurance and some old group C to still be that good. GT1 wasn't an FIA idea. It was by Jürgen Barth, Patrick Peter, and Stéphane Ratel. The SRO group and their GT3 tours? That was the early efforts of many of the same guys! The idea was to bring different cars used in one brand series together, including some touring cars. The FIA adopted their class system, because they can do that sometimes, and gave an homologation for a world championship to the same group. Here it wasn't just the FIA that killed it but also economics and bad timing: McLaren pulled out at the end of 1998, Panoz was talking of moving to the new LMP-1 class instead, BMW had pulled out two years earlier, one of Zackspeed car skipped one race and wanted to move to GT2 only (turns out that the viper was fun for them). Davidoff Classic racing team pulled out somewhere in 1998 from Gt1. At some points, you need a minimum number of entries to support a class. It died during the winter of 1998 due to lack of entries. The free engine design in F1: if you means the V12 and V8 in F1, everyone was de facto using a V10 before it became a rule to use a V10. I would like that the FIA bring some rules to encourage variability in F1 engines, I'm not sure how that could be done.

Thanks! Really happy you're enjoying the videos!

Thanks! I really appreciate the support and the kind words. Plenty more content on the way!

The OST is amazing

The WSC-95 was faster than the 911 GT-1 in 96 and proven reliable, it was rightly the odds on favourite. The 97 car beat itself with that massive engine fire, but it's worth remembering that we hadn't quite reached the era of bullet proof reliability that Audi would uscher in for the 2000's.

@@andrewcarter9649 the 911 GT1 should be 3 time lemans champions. (2 overall)

@@barryjohnson5288 in 97 there was a intake ruling that would affect boosted cars more than n/a..... Which is why the aging F1 was still able to be competitive in 97.... Fina shinitzer BMW F1 lost it's championship lead on the final race of the season when a the leading car cought on fire.......

clearly porsche fan boy making stuff up to save face, it couldn't compete, it was a long time ago

@@MegaBYSON at turbocharged GT1 cars were detuend to 550hp by the FIA rules, I'm not making it up.

I disagree that its clickbait. As I detail in the video, the reason that Porsche stopped racing the 911 GT1 (and ultimately left the sport until 2005), was because they felt the car was "too slow" to be competitive against the new cars from Mercedes and Toyota.

Pennzoil, right?

he said it in the video, 'Porsche believed it couldn't compete', please don't make stuff up

@@MegaBYSON Porsche couldn’t compete… without spending vast sums of money in research and development. Why have so many Formula 1 manufacturers quit over the past 10 or 15 years? Motorsport is not cheap.

As did so many of us.

and.....

@@MegaBYSON continued on until they left, then developed their new hypercar which they will return to compete in Le Mans

The McLaren F1 was conceived and created before the creation of the BPR Global GT series, let alone the LMGT1 class, and so it is not fair to say the F1 was a homologation special the likes of which Porsche, Mercedes and Toyota built. It is certainly true that Mercedes finished the class though haha

@ countreefus I agree with tehsheik. It was the F1 that really set this all off, especially when it won Le Mans in 1995. Remember, Mercedes used the F1 as a test mule for their CLK GTR race car.

@@Thnsrd42 I agree that the F1 was a formidable GT car, but it was a road car first, and a race car second, which is within the spirit of the GT1 regulations. Was its pace responsible for porsche's re-reading of the rules? Quite possibly, but the F1 was not a homologation special like the 911 GT1 and Mercedes CLK-GTR. Goes to show just how good the F1 was that other teams needed a re-think to compete!

I mean both haha

@@automobilistic 🤣

Gonna say, wasn't the thing with Group C was that it was actually very sane and thus successful (unlike Group B which really was unhinged). The insane bit was killing the whole lot off with the infamous F1 engines rule change. Pricing out everyone except big manufacturers... who then promptly left for F1 proper anyway. GT1 was basically a way to rescue Le Mans from oblivion.

@@AJBa83 group C cars got so scarily fast that they had to add chicanes to the mulsanne straight! Yes it was ultimately the move to F1 engines and trying to spin group c off as a formula series that killed it, but by the later years (even pre-F1 engines) it was pretty crazy

@@automobilistic that's true. I've always wondered what an onboard from Win Percy's Mulsanne Jaguar crash would be like since according to Brundle he could see the tops of the trees underneath. Makes Dumbreck'd flying CLR look a bit small.

Good point, I had forgotten about the MC8-R. That being said I doubt Porsche weren't already working on the 911 GT1, as the MC8-R was revealed only a year before the 911 GT1 started racing.

@@automobilistic ah fair. Would be hard to believe the 96 car was developed that short. I do think the mc8-r deserves mention when talking about the rise of late 90s gt1.

They did??? Before the 1973 911 Carrera RS Or the 1972 bmw CSL? or the 1965 Shelby gt350?...... Homologation specials were not new in the 80s...... I get it man, you think your a classic motorsports enthusiast now because you saw the Grand Tour special covering the Audi and lancia rivalry........cool dude 👍

@@MiguelGarcia-vj7oo Lancia Did it well before group B. The Stratos was a competition special. The 911 and BMW batmobile where built on existing platforms and where not the game changers that the Stratos or Quatro were. Also I never watch grand tour, Clarkson is more of a wanker than your gatekeeping comment.

The 911 GT1 certainly wasnt a failure, it won Le Mans! But it wasnt the fastest car there, and that is reflected by the fact porsche chose to stop racing in GT1 even before the class was killed off

Dr Ulrich ran an amazing team. They could swap an entire rear end assembly in an insanely short time. They had some of the best drivers and engineers.

True, if I remember correctly they first competed at Le Mans specifically in the early 50s

Porsche were developing an LMP car for 2000, sadly it was scrapped and the progress was turned into the Carrera GT. Its my understanding that VW (who owned Audi from 1998) only merged with Porsche in 2011, and so if it is the case that Porsche were the brains behind Audi's great successes in the early 2000s I would love to know more about how that came to be!

@@automobilistic Porsche has been developing stuff for Audi since the late 80s ..... Porsches actually designed the VR6 engine and the corrado. They would also develop the RS2........ There's dealer showroom posters showcasing the 964 and RS2 together.

This mostly had to do with the weight regulations of the GT1 class, which set a minimum allowed weight. 1996/7 there was no incentive for Porsche to save weight, as they were already as light as was allowed by the regulations. That being said many of the cars that competed in 1999 used aluminium honeycomb chassis, though that is at least in part due to the weight limit being decreased to 950 kg if I remember correctly

@@automobilistic Thanks.

A little bit of an off-topic but related titbit: in competitive sailing (e.g. my dad races 505s, and I used to race Laser Radials) it's common for the class to have a minimum weight for the boat. It's common these days for the most competitive boats to be built underweight, the weight is then brought up to the minimum using lead ballast. Doing this lets you optimise the weight distribution of the boat in a way that wouldn't be possible if the weight was structural. Have racing car manufacturers ever done something similar?

@@nerd1000ify Our boats were never weighed so never carried ballast.

@@nerd1000ify pretty much every race car manufacturer in every series does this nowadays if they can if a minimum weight is imposed.

The 917 was not a homologated car, as it raced in the Group 6 prototype class. The only road-legal examples of 917s are as a result of private modification. Porsche themselves never produced a 917 road car, as it was not required by the regulations of its class

@@automobilistic they did make one road legal 917K for the, at the time, owner of the Martini brand. It initially had Alabama plates and then changed to Texan ones in the early 00s after the owner's death.

Good point. That being said I highly doubt Porsche weren't already working on the 911 GT1, as the MC8-R was revealed only a year before the 911 GT1 started racing. Additionally, the huge failure of the MC8-R probably isn't what encouraged other manufacturers to follow suit - failure doesn't make for great inspiration lol

Not the first time with Porsche gets pissed when someone improves their own cars and beats their own game. the first time this happened was in 1956 when a swiss engineer put a wing on a 550 Spyder(before chaparral since he gets all the credit). I think he sets pole and Porsche lobbied to bann it since it beat their own works 550s with an A-list team of driver's..... Like savages, the officials ripped off the wing. Another time was with the Kremer racing 935k3...... Porsche was upset that it was better then their 935/78 which was the final factory version of the dominating 935 family...... The K3 would dominate everything and even defeat prototypes..... It's only kryptonite was the Zakspeed Ford capris in the DRM........

@@MiguelGarcia-vj7oo they can't have been that fussed about the 935 though as they continued to offer Joest and Kremer support after that when they ran the 936 copies and after that when they didn't have proper group c customer 956's. Mad given how awful the 1980 or 81 917 turned out. I think as any manufacturer would however, offer more customer support when they weren't up against the factory cars. But the 956/962 era was rife with the RLR tubs and privateers running massively modified chassis, yet Porsche still offered factory support to the Joest cars in the late 80's.

There's a reason Porsche ended the factory effort after 1998...

No shit it makes since.... The GT1 was super old by then and wasn't that competitive originally anyways..........

@@MiguelGarcia-vj7oo the c5r was in a slower class. and still won

@@MiguelGarcia-vj7oo it’s not a gt1 car and beat all gt1 cars and prototypes at the daytona 24h

@@michaelgomez4994 they were both in the same class, man........ Jesus Christ.........and a lower class 911 was second place.... The 911 was winner overall as well in 1973 against prototypes. And a 935k3 won le mans overall in 1979. And the McLaren F1 won le mans overall in 1995..... It happens....... Sometimes the GT cars get the best of the prototypes........

9

Do you honestly believe the late 90s was both Mercedes and Toyota’s *first* go at endurance racing?

@@yracpontiferous4846 I've been around a while and I know about MB horrific accident which got them to quit for a while, but they were not in it for a long time. And any team can re-group, quit for a few years and come back, so can Porsche. Amazingly Porsche was on a budget for the longest time and yet won whereas MB and Toyota always had money. Do more with less, governments should try it.

@@achristian7015 I can’t think of a way to reply nicely, just take note that your first statement contradicts the claim in your first post. Best of luck on your crusade against the big bad gov’t nobody said anything about. 👋

@@yracpontiferous4846 Not a crusade but a discussion. Anyway, it is unfortunate how many Canadians think we have "good government". I am amazed how delusional they are.

@@achristian7015 again, you’re inserting your opinion about gov’t in a conversation having NOTHING to do with gov’t. Ask yourself why you are obsessing over that topic. Don’t @ me if it has anything to do with something other than racing and how you were wrong to claim MB and Toyota weren’t already invested in endurance racing in the past.