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    Why is it that Porsche doesn't take part in F1??

    Should Porsche compete in F1?

    Re: Why is it that Porsche doesn't take part in F1??

    I asked the exact question to my friend Mark Preston, CTO of Aguri-Honda race F1 team. His reply was that F1 is about prestige rather than profit. Those who sponsor the race teams spend hundreds of millions every season without any tangible return. In his opinion, it is not feasible for Porsche to spend all that money to promote its brand. Other auto makers need the publicity of participation.

    Note that Ferrari is a different scenario when it comes to financial sponsorship.

    Re: Why is it that Porsche doesn't take part in F1??

    There is nothing they can charge extra for.

    Re: Why is it that Porsche doesn't take part in F1??

    Quote:
    SoCalHoosier said:
    There is nothing they can charge extra for.



    *Mr. SoCalHoosier walks into the Porsche dealership to order a new 998TT*

    "I'd like to buy one with all the extras, including PDK."
    - "OK. So that's $130.000 for the basic car, $25.000 for the PDK, $50.000 for the Sport Chrono and $65.000 for the natural leather interior. Would you like to see our selection of carbon-fiber add-ons?"

    Like you said, where there's a will, there's a way

    Re: Why is it that Porsche doesn't take part in F1??

    I don't understand various things about why Porsche doesn't compete in F1.

    Yes, F1 is expensive but I think sponsors will be lining up to put their logos on a Porsche F1 car.

    Next, F1 is where so much of the cutting edge technology is developed. It would provide Porsche with an even better arena in which to do this.

    If it's a question of cost, why then has Porsche sunk so much money in the past into racing in Le Mans? They've won it 16 times (I think).

    Ferrari make sports cars to fund its racing team. Why doesn't Porsche divert some of its loot into racing rather than buying 20% of VW????

    Surely, the appeal and image of Porsche will rise yet higher if they win F1 races. More buyers, more cash.

    Re: Why is it that Porsche doesn't take part in F1??

    Yes, but what if they dont win races???
    It'll be embarrasing

    Re: Why is it that Porsche doesn't take part in F1??

    Moreover, since Porsche is so expert at extracting the very maximum amount of money out of their sports car buyers, (which is reflected by Porsche's huge profitability) then surely this means that Porsche, more than any other manufacturer, is in the best position to enter F1 and cope with the costs.

    It just doesn't look good when other car manufacturers are winning all the laurels. A sports car manufacturer must maintain a racing pedigree.

    It just looks like Porsche is running scared of Ferrari in their home turf when I am sure Porsche can really deliver in F1.

    If Audi and Bentley can set their minds to winning Le Mans and then do it (just to prove they can), then why can't a thoroughbred car manufacturer like Porsche show their mettle in the crucible of F1?

    Come on Porsche, show everyone what you are made of.

    Re: Why is it that Porsche doesn't take part in F1??

    Porsche will need several years and more than a billion dollars to compete in F1. The first few seasons will be a disaster for Porsche and hugely embarressing (that's the nature of intense F1 competition). Ferrari is being slaughtered by Renault this season, and Porsche will ruin their brand if they compete.

    I'd rather see Porsche spend the money on improving the 911, but F1 is a sunk cost that will never payoff.

    Don't forget that the Porsche brand aura is largely perception. They are not invincible anymore as competition has cought-up (and sometimes gone ahead).

    A single F1 season will destroy the Porsche brand.

    Re: Why is it that Porsche doesn't take part in F1??

    Don't forget Porsche provided turbo engines to McLaren when they won the F1 World Championship in 1984, 1985 and 1986.

    Re: Why is it that Porsche doesn't take part in F1??

    Quote:
    Oxonian said:
    ,
    Don't forget that the Porsche brand aura is largely perception. They are not invincible anymore as competition has cought-up (and sometimes gone ahead).

    A single F1 season will destroy the Porsche brand.



    Porsche has parlayed its pass success in racing into a money machine. I would wager if you were to ask the average person on the street with just a modicum of car knowledge whether Porsche is still in racing most would say yes.

    The majority of Porsche buyers today have no idea of Porsche racing or for that matter the Ring or Ring times. The buy the car soley on the name and perception of what it stands for.

    From a business standpoint this is one area where I agree with the Porsche CEO. Milk the name and extract as much money as you can from the dumb down public.

    Re: Why is it that Porsche doesn't take part in F1??

    Quote:
    nberry said:I would wager if you were to ask the average person on the street with just a modicum of car knowledge whether Porsche is still in racing most would say yes.


    For a good reason.
    They are racing.

    GT3 Cup, GT3 RSR, Rs Spyder ring a bell?
    But hey, don't let the facts bother your argument.

    Re: Why is it that Porsche doesn't take part in F1??

    Quote:
    nberry said:
    They buy the car soley on the name and perception of what it stands for.


    this sounds more like a ferrari buyer to me!

    Re: Why is it that Porsche doesn't take part in F1??

    Quote:
    nberry said:
    I would wager if you were to ask the average person on the street with just a modicum of car knowledge whether Porsche is still in racing most would say yes.




    Nick, if you had just a modicum of car knowledge you would have known who developed and built the Porsche RS Spyders which the Penske team was running at Sebring this weekend before you wrote that post.

    Re: Why is it that Porsche doesn't take part in F1??

    Quote:
    icon said:
    Quote:
    nberry said:
    They buy the car soley on the name and perception of what it stands for.


    this sounds more like a ferrari buyer to me!



    Ferrari is by no means innocent. It is more guilty than Porsche for abandoning the purist sport car model.

    To be quite honest, only the Z06 delivers what a sports car should be at a fraction of the price of competition.

    Also, there are more and more consumers who demand luxury cars with racing heritage (a.k.a. racing perception) which I admit to being one of those consumers. Ferrari, Porsche and others must make products for us Alonso-wannabees.

    Yet, there are those who still crave a pure experience and Porsche has to its credit the GT3. Maybe people like me will be swayed away from comfort-orietned hybrids towards 'real' driving machines. Two of my friends dropped their 996 TT for a couple of heavily discounted 996 GT3s just to track them. At least Porsche had a practical and affordable solution (which Ferrari will never have).

    Re: Why is it that Porsche doesn't take part in F1??

    Quote:
    fritz said:
    Quote:
    nberry said:
    I would wager if you were to ask the average person on the street with just a modicum of car knowledge whether Porsche is still in racing most would say yes.




    Nick, if you had just a modicum of car knowledge you would have known who developed and built the Porsche RS Spyders which the Penske team was running at Sebring this weekend before you wrote that post.



    To my knowledge this is Porsche's first factory entry in any racing event in many years. They are only putting their toe in the water by not going against the big boys. They opted to go with a lower and slower class but certainly more competitive for Porsche.

    Hey I agree with their non-existent racing strategy. Fleece the buying public by giving the impression they are racing. Recall the 996 ads by Porsche drawing on their racing heritage?

    Re: Why is it that Porsche doesn't take part in F1??

    Quote:
    Oxonian said:
    The first few seasons will be a disaster for Porsche and hugely embarressing (that's the nature of intense F1 competition). Ferrari is being slaughtered by Renault this season, and Porsche will ruin their brand if they compete.

    I'd rather see Porsche spend the money on improving the 911, but F1 is a sunk cost that will never payoff.

    Don't forget that the Porsche brand aura is largely perception. They are not invincible anymore as competition has cought-up (and sometimes gone ahead).

    A single F1 season will destroy the Porsche brand.


    weird way of thinking! can't win right away so don't compete?
    is the ferrari brand being destroyed by renault?
    what aura is not perception based?
    f1 is thought of as the pinnacle in racing!
    a brand that wants to be known for performance has to compete in the top series!
    anyone knows you have to get in the game to have a chance to win!

    Re: Why is it that Porsche doesn't take part in F1??

    you think that will be embaresing fo porsche, how about both RS spyders retiering with broken driveshafts at sebring, geting outlasted by interstort lola.

    Re: Why is it that Porsche doesn't take part in F1??

    Quote:
    964C2 said:
    Don't forget Porsche provided turbo engines to McLaren when they won the F1 World Championship in 1984, 1985 and 1986.


    Yes, but also don't forget they 'hid' behind the TAG label and Porsche involvement was rarely mentioned.

    Re: Why is it that Porsche doesn't take part in F1??

    Quote:
    nberry said:
    The majority of Porsche buyers today have no idea of....



    Didn't know you were in contact with the majority of Porsche buyers.....

    I love your posts Nick, always setting yourself up for some kind of ridicule

    Re: Why is it that Porsche doesn't take part in F1??

    Porsche can only win when racing themselves now -as in the Carrera Cup series.

    Even with bringing Norbert Singer out of retirement to be a consultant and getting the super talented team owner Penske to run the new Porsche Spyders they still lost at Sebring. And they had no decent run even before their alternators and driveshafts broke like 60's British sedans.

    The well developed 996GT3's were beaten at Sebring by a Mustang engined racecar built in Georgia and they sometimes
    get their asses handed to them by Cadillac and Pontiac sedans in ALMS racing. Teams that had received the new 997GT3 RS were scared to enter them - not enough development time meant slower qualifying times or possible DNF's. And Porsche has yet to field a race car in the past several years that competes with Corvette.

    Porsche managagement must have a different idea of marketing and racing leadership then they used to. So dont hold your breath waiting for race victories from Porsches Exclusive shop.

    Somethings got to change, or they have and the new Porsche reality is based upon selling racing history and not the present.

    Legends are made and sometimes legends die. In Porsches case, its suicide. They can laugh themselves all the way to the bank if they want to, but a big chunk of sales profit comes from a buyers market perception that Porsches are winners. And when that residual of racing history becomes a empty account good times will be rare in Stuttgart.


    Re: Why is it that Porsche doesn't take part in F1??

    Well i think Porsche remembers very well the 1990 disaster.

    They came back to formula 1 with a brand new v12 designed for footwork/arrows, and this was a pluri annual partnership. The engine was about 190 kg when the ford was 136 kg.Despite being the heaviest engine of the year by far, the porsche engine was not reliable and not even powerfull.

    Footwork asked Porsche to go F**k with their engine before the end of the first year...

    Re: Why is it that Porsche doesn't take part in F1??

    F1 makes no sense for Porsche. Only large manufacturers (or companies owned by large manufacturers - i.e. Ferrari) have a hope of spending enough money to get decent results. It just is not possible for Porsche to compete in this arena.

    With some of you guys, Porsche just can't do anything right. I'm sure we'd all be a lot happier is Porsche hadn't done the Cayenne and instead had used that money to win Le Mans a few more times. Well, racing is a lot more expensive in relative terms than it was in the '70s and '80s. Porsche has to make prudent decisions to remain solvent and as a sad result, their will be less room for racing than in the past. The RS Spyder is a good example of the limited scope type of program that Porsche can execute in this day and age. All is not despair though. Despite the usual teething problems, the RS Spyder will be an excellent platform and I think there is a lot more to come.

    Long gone are the golden ages when factories competed for long periods of time in major international series (with limited/no amounts of team sponsorship) without financially blowing their brains out.

    Re: Why is it that Porsche doesn't take part in F1??

    Why isn't Porsche in F1?
    1) F1 costs $300 Million a year at least for a winning program.
    2) The technology of F1 does not carry over significantly to road cars. Development of GT race cars (GT3 RSR) is more beneficial to road car development. Plus a large percentage of the development of the car goes to aero work and testing. An F1 program would improve the knowledge of the racing staff more than the road cars.
    3)If Porsche wanted to get into F1 they should have bought Cosworth. It was sold for a song and they are already plugged into the F1 circus.

    Re: Why is it that Porsche doesn't take part in F1??

    Quote:
    icon said:
    Quote:
    Oxonian said:
    The first few seasons will be a disaster for Porsche and hugely embarressing (that's the nature of intense F1 competition). Ferrari is being slaughtered by Renault this season, and Porsche will ruin their brand if they compete.

    I'd rather see Porsche spend the money on improving the 911, but F1 is a sunk cost that will never payoff.

    Don't forget that the Porsche brand aura is largely perception. They are not invincible anymore as competition has cought-up (and sometimes gone ahead).

    A single F1 season will destroy the Porsche brand.


    weird way of thinking! can't win right away so don't compete?
    is the ferrari brand being destroyed by renault?
    what aura is not perception based?
    f1 is thought of as the pinnacle in racing!
    a brand that wants to be known for performance has to compete in the top series!
    anyone knows you have to get in the game to have a chance to win!



    Porsche won't be able to win even if they wanted to. Racing isn't so simple nowadays. Renault will hurt the Ferrari brand (and every other brand) by the end of this year's F1. The new Renault cars performance is shredding competition into pieces.

    On a final note: I personally admire Porsche for dropping this racing/competition macho crap and focusing on building little miracles such as the 997.

    Re: Why is it that Porsche doesn't take part in F1??

    Quote:
    JimFlat6 said:
    Porsche can only win when racing themselves now -as in the Carrera Cup series.

    Even with bringing Norbert Singer out of retirement to be a consultant and getting the super talented team owner Penske to run the new Porsche Spyders they still lost at Sebring. And they had no decent run even before their alternators and driveshafts broke like 60's British sedans.

    The well developed 996GT3's were beaten at Sebring by a Mustang engined racecar built in Georgia and they sometimes
    get their asses handed to them by Cadillac and Pontiac sedans in ALMS racing. Teams that had received the new 997GT3 RS were scared to enter them - not enough development time meant slower qualifying times or possible DNF's. And Porsche has yet to field a race car in the past several years that competes with Corvette.

    Porsche managagement must have a different idea of marketing and racing leadership then they used to. So dont hold your breath waiting for race victories from Porsches Exclusive shop.

    Somethings got to change, or they have and the new Porsche reality is based upon selling racing history and not the present.

    Legends are made and sometimes legends die. In Porsches case, its suicide. They can laugh themselves all the way to the bank if they want to, but a big chunk of sales profit comes from a buyers market perception that Porsches are winners. And when that residual of racing history becomes a empty account good times will be rare in Stuttgart.





    Funny you should mention Singer. There is a memorable quote from him in the book "Porsche 956/962: The Enduring Champions" that shows that Porsche's current philosophy of avoiding top tier racing is not new.

    [Describing how Porsche was avoiding the prototypes for overall victory back in the early 80's] "It was the worst thing. if you go racing, you should always race to win overall. Anything else is bullshit!"

    Of course, after that came the 956/962 and the rest was history. Porsche will make a comeback, but times are too good now. The competition is fierce, so the bean-counters are probably worried that a top tier competition program will cost too much money.

    But what they maybe don't "get" is that racing is what gives us engines like the ones found in the Turbo and GT3. It also gives us proper transmissions that were actually servicable, instead of the "throw away" items we have now ... "Because it's cheaper."

    If there's a lesson to be learnt here, don't reward them directly for this behaviour. They make absolutely lovely luxury cars now, but I'm not so interested in that. I'm probably in the minority. I'll buy a used Turbo or GT3 (looking at purchase some time next year) and that will give me everything I want at a heavily discounted price.

    Right now Porsche are the darling of the auto industry. Other CEO's look at Porsche with absolute envy. I wonder how many "car guys" are in Porsche's upper management?

    Re: Why is it that Porsche doesn't take part in F1??

    Porsche has always tried to finesse the rules or cherry pick
    what year to participate in Prototype racing. That I can understand. Its not a cheap endeavour. But its their current range of road cars below the GT3 that have zero zero zero zero racing success that is the big question for sales in the long term.

    You can look at every year from 1971 and every Porsche model sold up till the start of the M96 powered replica cars
    in 1999. Everyone of them had international class winning racing and rallying successes. All the way through the 911-914-924-944-968. Then we get to the 986/996. Nothing.

    Re: Why is it that Porsche doesn't take part in F1??

    Quote:
    JimFlat6 said:
    Porsche has always tried to finesse the rules or cherry pick
    what year to participate in Prototype racing. That I can understand. Its not a cheap endeavour. But its their current range of road cars below the GT3 that have zero zero zero zero racing success that is the big question for sales in the long term.

    You can look at every year from 1971 and every Porsche model sold up till the start of the M96 powered replica cars
    in 1999. Everyone of them had international class winning racing and rallying successes. All the way through the 911-914-924-944-968. Then we get to the 986/996. Nothing.



    I agree, in the long term it will hurt them. But the question is, do the decision makers see that?

    Sorry to hijack this thread BTW

    Re: Why is it that Porsche doesn't take part in F1??

    Quote:
    brad23 said:
    Why isn't Porsche in F1?
    1) F1 costs $300 Million a year at least for a winning program.
    2) The technology of F1 does not carry over significantly to road cars. Development of GT race cars (GT3 RSR) is more beneficial to road car development. Plus a large percentage of the development of the car goes to aero work and testing. An F1 program would improve the knowledge of the racing staff more than the road cars.
    3)If Porsche wanted to get into F1 they should have bought Cosworth. It was sold for a song and they are already plugged into the F1 circus.



    Firs of all I've heard that Audi spends as much into their LeMans Program
    Second The prototyp tech is the same as in F1, only a little behind so the aplication to road cars is the same as in f1, if u look at porsche or a audi with its bodiwork of it looks exacly look like a wide F1.

    Re: Why is it that Porsche doesn't take part in F1??

    Quote:
    arakis said:
    Second The prototyp tech is the same as in F1, only a little behind so the aplication to road cars is the same as in f1


    I wouldn't say that
    - The engine in the Turbo/GT3 is a direct descendant of the one in the LeMans winning GT1.
    I don't remember any road car having even a remote relative of an F1 engine
    - The Carrera GT is basically a road version of the LMP2000
    Again, never seen a road-going F1

    And more than that, LeMans is not just prototypes...

    Re: Why is it that Porsche doesn't take part in F1??

    F1 is all about corporate egos...that's why Renault, Honda, Toyota, BMW and M-B are in it. Ferrari is there for tradition, they've been there every year since 1950.
    Porsche's ego is already large enough without going into F1

     
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