The Porsche 917/30 was the best car I drove in 2019 – Thank Frankel it’s Friday

It so nearly didn’t happen. When Porsche told me I was down for the drive my immediate fear was not that I might not be able to handle this 1,100bhp Can-Am monster from 1973, but more immediately that I might not be able to get into it at all. Having an open cockpit meant that headroom wasn’t going to be a problem, but when I first saw that the seat would not move and there was no way I could safely get my feet on the pedals with my knees rammed up under the dash, I thought it was all over. But then the never-say-die folk from Porsche Classic got their spanners out, did some fiddling and were able to raise the steering column just a fraction, but enough for my knees to be slightly more bent and me to be able to hit all three pedals reliably. So it was all on again.

And then it was all off. There were five Porsche 917s in our 10 minute demonstration and four of them fired up on the button and duly thundered off to the assembly area. The 917/30 did not. Indeed it resisted all attempts to start it until there were no more oily treats to squirt down its inlet tracts, no more external battery packs with the strength to turn over its 5.4-litre, flat-12 engine. I needed a miracle, and Goodwood provided it. Or, more precisely, an elderly Land Rover which proceeded to tow the recalcitrant Porsche through the paddock, crowds agog, until with an deafening bang as its unburned fuel detonated at once, the mighty motor deigned to spin into life.

Minutes before, and I mention only this because he’ll hate me for it, I approached Chris Harris who was sitting in Porsche’s own Gulf-liveried short-tail 917K and told him I wasn’t getting a drive. He was already half out of the car before I could tell him what to do with his idea that I drive his instead.

But once the 917/30 had been coaxed, cajoled, bullied and physically dragged out of bed, it ran like a new 911. Only a rather faster, noisier one.

You may be surprised I didn’t add the adjective ‘terrifying’ in there too. But here’s the thing: I felt plenty of emotions before driving it – nervous apprehension mainly – and plenty more while at its wheel – euphoria if I recall correctly – but truly the only fear was that I’d somehow find a way of betraying the trust Porsche had put in me. Only two 917/30s raced in Can-Am and this was one of them, the car used by Mark Donohue to record the 917/30’s first win in the formula no less. The car itself I never feared.

Because – and I was as surprised to discover this as you may be to read it – there is nothing inherently frightening about driving the 917/30. Don’t forget that by the time it was built Porsche had been developing the 917 for four solid seasons and it had already had a season in Can-Am with what I understand to be the far more tricky 917/10. Everyone I’d spoke to who’d driven it – from Vic Elford, Derek Bell and Richard Attwood to Marino Franchitti – said it would be fine. And fine it was.

From the moment I took to the track and felt how it steered and stopped I knew that unlike the earliest 917s with half the power, this one wasn’t waiting for its moment to mug me. On the contrary it felt like the most sorted racing car of its era, because that is almost certainly what it was.

Even so, I did wait until towards the end of the ten lap demo before finally pressing the throttle to the floor, and I waited until I was doing well over 100mph before I did it. And still the enormous rear Avon tyres spun instantly. Yet even that wasn’t scary: the car stayed as straight and true as if it had been parked.

Before I drove it, I asked Vic Elford what it was like to race, as he had come out of retirement to do one Interserie round at Hockenheim in 1973 and, with Leo Kinnunen is one of two men still alive to have won a race in a 917/30. To which he rather simply replied, ‘I can’t really tell you I’m afraid. It was never in the plan to actually race it. The plan was to start in front and stay in front. And that’s what we did. No racing required.’

Now I’ve driven it and have some inkling of what it is like, it seems silly even to have asked the question.

Group image by Jayson Fong.