Total 911: This year, Porsche is celebrating 40 years of Group C. You were the engineer who was responsible for the most decorated period in the company’s racing history. How do you look back on that period now?
Norbert Singer: It’s interesting because there were a lot of details that I didn’t realise during that period. I was too busy preparing and developing for the next race and season. But now I’m trying to gather information together for a book and I’ve found a lot of interesting details that happened during that time. It’s amazing because I’m talking to old colleagues from those days and none of us really realised the big steps in development that we did. Right now it’s 40 years back, but in my mind and in some of my colleagues’ minds, it all only just happened.
You dominated Le Mans in the 1980s. Was it the case that you didn’t realise the magnitude and the legacy of what you and your team were achieving?
No, not really. We had to make a new car because the regulations had changed a lot. Things like ground effect and consumption were introduced for the season. With consumption, it’s fine to introduce the ideology but it’s not like a number, such as displacement of an engine. It was tricky. But consumption is a valuable piece of the puzzle and we had to do a
