Porsche's Group C monster once bent the space-time continuum on the Nordschleife.
Porsche knows how to celebrate an anniversary. For the 40th of its legendary Group C sports prototypes, the 956 and similar 962, Porsche gathered a handful of examples and some of the racers who drove them in-period for a reunion at the company’s Leipzig test track. Porsche also put a trove of archival material online, including footage from one of the 956’s most incredible outings, the 1983 Nürburgring 1000km.
This was the last time that top-flight sports prototypes would race on the Nürburgring Nordschleife. The time a promising young driver named Stefan Bellof set a 6:11.13 in qualifying, a record only beaten by a specially prepared version of Porsche’s own 919 just four years ago. A remarkable moment where the fastest sports cars yet conceived raced on the most fearsome of tracks still in existence.
In-car footage of Derek Bell lapping the Ring in the 956 has floated around the internet for a few years now, but I’ve never seen this. It’s a Porsche-produced film that shows highlights of the company’s victories at both the Nürburgring and the later Spa 1000 km. It does a great job of showing just how obscenely fast the 956 lapped the Ring. After years of getting used to watching videos of fast road cars and GT3 race cars, the 956 looks like it’s going three times as fast.
The 956 was a ground-breaker for Porsche and sports-prototypes in general. This was Porsche’s first application of “ground effect,” the aerodynamic principle developed in Formula 1 that essentially turned the whole car into a wing. There were other ground-effect sports cars before the 956, but Porsche got the aerodynamics right and paired this innovative aero concept with its tried-and-true twin-turbo flat-six. The combination created the most successful prototype race car of all time, winning championships around the globe, and the 24 Hours of Le Mans five times in a row.
Arguably, the 956 and its ilk were too fast for the Nürburgring. An aluminum monocoque chassis made the 956 safer than the tube-frame Porsche prototypes that preceded it, but that doesn’t change the fact that these were fast cars racing hard on circuits designed with much slower cars in mind. Bellof had a heavy crash at the Ring in a series of esses subsequently named after him, and he lost his life in a 956 at Spa two years later. The following year, the Nürburgring 1000 km was held on the brand-new Grand Prix circuit, which is far better suited for the likes of the 956 and its Group C competitors.
Racing 956s on the Nürburgring was probably a bad idea, but like a lot of bad ideas, it produced extraordinary results.
Chris Perkins Senior Editor Chris Perkins is the Web Editor for Road & Track magazine.
Keyword: You Need to Watch This Rare Footage of Porsche 956s on the Nürburgring