Penske Porsche 917/30

There have been many racing cars that have given me pleasure as a driver. Race-winning cars always spring to mind, too. Others that I have not driven, I just look at in awe. Some that are always at the forefront of my mind are the Porsche 917, which was a fantastic car in its day; winning at Le Mans in 1970 and 1971, and the Porsche 908/3, a car built to race only at the Targa Florio and the Nüürburgring—both amazing cars. But, as time passes on, faster cars replace those once thought of as great cars. New ideas and technology take over and give us new models to drive, race and spectate. The Chevron B19 was tremendous; the Lola 332 was a fantastically fast F5000 car. Lola kept that car in production for over 8 years. They had tried to bring in two other cars to supersede it, but they weren’t as good. Ferrari had the 312PB, which was the last sports car to be run by the factory, a super car that won every race in 1972—with the exception of Le Mans, because they didn’t go there! In 1973, they (Ferrari) were narrowly beaten by Matra, who had also won in 1972. Matra had better aerodynamics that gave a greater straight-line speed.

But overall, a car that gave me a great deal of pleasure and satisfaction to drive was the ex-Mark Donohue, Penske Porsche “Panzer,” the 917/30. Incidentally, I believe, I was the only other person that raced the car. It had 1,100 horsepower and had been very well developed by Mark on his way to winning the 1973 Can-Am championship. The handling was truly amazing, the brakes were fantastic, and the turbo engine had very little throttle lag.