Dinner with Alwin Springer & Uwe Brettel tonight

[Carrera3.5L]

As the topic indicates, got to break bread with the two of the most powerful Porsche people in North America tonight. My friend Steve (another former Andial/PMNA employee who assisted with my engine build) turned 40 and his parents threw a surprise birthday party for him. Alwin, fresh from a month long vacation to Australia, looks like retirement (or semi-retirement) suits him just fine.

I've known Alwin for years (having worked for him at Andial) but this was the first time that I have formally met Uwe. Very, very down to earth guy who has a distinct vision where he would like Porsche to go in the coming years. We sat down and talked by ourselves for a good 30-45 minutes.

My friends Eric Bloss and Bert Kager from Porsche Motorsport were also there, so it was kind of fun to sit down with Alwin and the guys in a non work environment and reminisce about the good old days when Porsche dominated prototype racing.

I asked Alwin who he believed the top 962 pilots were:

1. Bob Wollek
2. Al Holbert
3. Jochen Mass
4. Klaus Ludwig

Don't think I can argue with that list, although you can certainly add names like Hans Stuck, Bernd Schneider and James Weaver to it!

Highlight for me was one of they guys playing Gran Turismo 4 on the big screen and Alwin and Uwe critiquing his driving. He was driving the Ruf Boxster at the Nurburgring.

Some interesting things coming down the the pipeline...

Ralph

[speeder]

Excellent post! This forum rocks.

[KNS]

Sooo.... what interesting things are coming down the pipeline?

[Carrera3.5L]

Originally posted by KNS
Sooo.... what interesting things are coming down the pipeline?

I wish I could tell you all of the details, but will have to wait for the announcements to be made. Can tell you that there are no plans for drag racing, F1 or any other open wheeled series.

There will be an expansion of products and services offered through PMNA though. Some of the thoughts Uwe presented made me scratch my head a bit, but he seems to be doing his research diligently and after explaining his rational it seems plausible. Uwe certainly has grandiose plans for Porsche Motorsport here in the States and seems to be the positive, go-getter type to make it happen. Look for more support in the coming years at the grassroots level.

His challenge will be getting the Germans in the Fatherland fully on board, as Alwin was always beating his head against the wall.

I asked about setting up a Pelican member open-house/shop tour at PMNA and while there was some interest the timing is not perfect right now. They are extremely busy right now and want to wait until the various announcements are made in the coming months before opening up the shop to interested observers.

Ralph

[Jim Garfield]

Thanks for the report. We can only hope that the suits in Stuttgart follow through with the plans.... it seems as though we've been hearing about pending racing programs for the last 5 or 6 years.... hopefully something happens soon.

[cegerer]

Did the "Pontiac. Not Porsche ...." (referring to the Daytona 24 and Homestead races) TV commercial play while they were there? I would be interested in their reaction! That commercial plays every 15 minutes on Speed Channel and it's getting a bit irritating. Porsche needs to get back into racing. Soon. Hopefully, those announcements will be in that direction.

[Carrera3.5L]

Originally posted by cegerer
Did the "Pontiac. Not Porsche ...." (referring to the Daytona 24 and Homestead races) TV commercial play while they were there? I would be interested in their reaction!

Well, if that is the commercial that I am thinking of showing all the DP's being powered by Pontiac engines then no they didn't see it last night. Everyone was too busy playing Gran Turismo 4! Uwe did mention that he does watch Speed Channel quite frequently though so I'm sure he's probably seen it. Alwin couldn't get over how realistic it is and the fact that you can actually make different "upgrades" to the cars. I don't think that there are any Porsche's in the game (other then the Ruf tuner cars) because Alwin mentioned that the makers of the game wanted a ton of money from Porsche to be included and they flat said "No thanks".

Funny you mention Pontiac, we talked about them for awhile as well. We were discussing Porsche's business model over the years and how they make turn-key race cars available to essentially anyone that can write a check while the other automakers run their 1 or 2 car "werks" teams. I mentioned to him that I recently read an article in Racer where it seems that Pontiac is going to attempt to follow in Porsche's footsteps with a customer program for the GTO running in Grand-Am GT. He says if anyone can do it, GM has the resources and capital to make it happen. Neither of us could figure out for the life of us while this hasn't been duplicated with any great degree of success in the past.

I don't believe that Grand-Am and IMSA/ALMS will be able to coexist long-term, much like Champ Car and IRL. The racing might be higher level in IMSA, but Grand-Am has the deep pockets of the France family (i.e. NASCAR) while Don Panoz is certainly not poor but can't compete with that nor with father time as he has got to be around 70 years of age.

Lots of interesting facets that will bear watching in the next year or so...

Ralph