How it feels to drive a Porsche 917 at Members’ Meeting | Andrew Frankel

So, how was it for you, Andrew?

“I am genuinely lost for words,” he tells us after his drive on the Sunday of the 77^th Members’ Meeting. “It’s ridiculous, but this car was spinning its wheels in third gear at the end of the pit straight with every touch of the throttle. The power is utterly incredible.”

The 917/30 Can-Am Spyder of 1972 is known as the most powerful sports racer ever built. Turning the Le Mans-winning 917 into the 917/30 Can-Am giant involved lengthening the wheelbase and bolting twin turbochargers to the 5.3-litre flat-12 engine, virtually doubling its power. Our Andrew at   Members’ Meeting had around 1,200bhp under his right foot, in a car weighing no more than 850kg.

“I have driven a 917 before, but not a turbocharged Can-Am car. Given its age I thought it would be very difficult to drive, but not so. It has a steering wheel, three pedals and a gear lever. And a quite a gentle clutch. The gearing – there are only four gears – is very high and you have to be careful getting it off the line. And like all racing cars it doesn’t like going very slowly, but once you get the revs up you can drive it as fast or as slow as you like very easily.

“And that’s the most incredible thing of all: just how easy the car makes it for you. The power delivery is very progressive and not at all like the light switch I imagined. The performance is so accessible and the car gives you so much confidence you quickly feel at home. I would love to have spent all day in it.

“At Goodwood, I was pulling 6,500rpm in fourth down the Lavant Straight. I don’t know what it is geared to do so don’t know the speed, but it was fast.” In period, a sister car to the Sunoco 917/30 was clocked at 233mph. Mark Donohue set a closed-course speed record at Talladega Speedway in the same car, averaging 221mph.

The Sunoco Can-Am Spyder, already a very familiar Porsche at Goodwood, was joined on the Motor Circuit by four other 917s for the demonstration laps, put on as part of the 917’s 50^th anniversary celebrations. The others in what was surely the world’s fastest birthday parade were 917 chassis number one, fresh from its restoration, 917/30 chassis number one (also just restored, and in Sussex!), the Le Mans-winning Gulf Oil-liveried 917K short-tail, and the daddy, the Can-Am Spyder. As well as Andrew and Mark Webber, drivers at MM included Richard Attwood who brought the 917 home first at Le Mans in 1970 for Porsche’s first outright win in the 24 Hours.

Goodwood is not Le Mans, but there are similarities which make the 917 at home here, reckons Frankel. 

“Goodwood suits the 917 because it’s such a fast, flowing circuit. You do not want to go slow in this car because then you can’t get the power down. At Goodwood, you can really get the 917 moving through the fast corners, and once you are into fourth and flying, you begin to understand what it must have been like to race this car.” 

So, overall, quite a good day in the office?

“I was able to drive a Porsche 917/30 pretty much as hard as I could get it to go and I never thought in my lifetime I would get to do that. As driving experiences go it’s up there and beyond. Before today it was the other 917 that held my top spot, but this car has eclipsed that.

“It was the experience of a lifetime. I am going to retire now.”

 He quite liked it then…