Formula One
Despite Ferdinand Porsche having designed Grand Prix cars in the 1920s and 1930s, the Porsche AG never felt at home in single seater series.
The Porsche 718 RSK, a two-seater sports car, in the late 1950s was also entered in Formula Two races, as rules permitted this, and lap times were promising. The 718 first was modified by moving the seat into the center of the car, then also proper open wheelers were built. These 1500 cc cars enjoyed some success. The former F2 were moved up to Formula One in 1961, where Porsche's outdated design was not competitive. For 1962, a newly developed flat-eight powered and sleek Porsche 804 produced Porsche's only win as a constructor in a championship race, claimed by Dan Gurney at the 1962 French Grand Prix. One week later, he repeated the success in front of Porsche's home crowd on Stuttgart's Solitude in a non-championship race. At the end of the season, Porsche withdrew from F1 due to the high costs, just having acquired the Reutter factory. Volkswagen and German branches of suppliers had no interest in a F1 commitment as this series was too far away from road cars. Privateers continued to enter the out-dated Porsche 718 in F1 until 1964.
Having been very successful with turbocharged cars in the 1970s, Porsche returned to Formula One in 1983 after nearly two decades away, supplying water-cooled V6 turbo engines badged as TAG units for the McLaren Team. For aerodynamic reasons, the Porsche-typical flat engine was out of the question for being too wide. The TAG engine was designed to very tight requirements issued by McLaren's John Barnard-he specified the physical layout of the engine to match the design of his proposed car. The engine was funded by TAG who retained the naming rights to it, although the engines bore "made by Porsche" identification. TAG-Porsche-powered cars took two constructor championships in 1984 and 1985, three driver crowns between 1984 and 1986. The engines powered McLaren to 25 victories between 1984 and 1987.
Porsche returned to F1 again in 1991 as an engine supplier, however, this time with disastrous results: The Footwork Arrows cars powered with the overweight Porsche 3512 double-V6 which weighed 400 pounds (180 kg), (the engine was in fact 2 combined TAG engines used by McLaren from 1983 to 1987 minus the turbochargers) failed to score a single point, and failed even to qualify for over half the races that year. After the Porsche engines was sacked by Footwork in favor of Cosworth DFRs, Porsche has not participated in Formula One since.
During the 2010 Paris Motor Show, Porsche chairman Matthias Mueller made a statement hinting to a possible Porsche return to Formula 1. Specifically, Mueller stated that either Porsche or Audi would compete in Le Mans while the other would turn to Formula 1. Previously, Audi's motorsport boss Wolfgang Ulrich had already stated that Audi and Formula 1 "do not fit."
Read more about this topic: Porsche In Motorsport
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