Born NOT to run
CHAMPAGNE WAS POURED OVER the nose according to Porsche tradition and the car the world was expecting to take the marque back to the Le Mans 24 Hours in 2000 edged onto the Weissach test track. Many of those at the shakedown – certainly drivers Bob Wollek and Allan McNish – were not aware that it had already been decreed that this would be the final run for the car as well as the first.
And so a machine dubbed the LMP2000 joined the litany of unraced cars strewn through motor sport history. Some were simply not meant to be. Which was the case for the LMP2000. It wasn’t so much axed as never given the go-ahead. The same went for the Toyota TF110 Formula 1 car, while others were scuppered by rule changes, the cancellation of series or political whims.
The Porsche was developed during 1999 as the firm sat out Le Mans after taking its 16th victory in the French enduro with the 911 GT1-98 the previous summer. Yet a bid for another win in 2000 was never signed off. Porsche’s racing department had received the green light to develop a new LMP prototype powered by a V10 engine, but not yet to race it. That was pending.
Herbert Ampferer, the boss of Porsche Motorsport at the time, tells what he calls “a complicated story”. “When I came back from Le Mans in ’98, the question was what to do
