When I first started work for Porsche, I was naturally introduced to their ways of working, which I found in later years to become “the Porsche way.” Years later, I discovered that other automobile companies or racing teams did things a little different. The Porsche way wasn’t just talking around, or trying some wind tunnel testing, or theorizing, it was doing it on the track. Doing it on the track gave us a truth and meaning to our development, it was realistic, not just theory. Good ideas, whether developed in the wind tunnel or on computer these days, can only be seen in reality on the track.
These were big things, it was a big effort to try and get your racecar the fastest and most reliable to cross the finish line first. By all means use everything available to assist your development, but ultimately it has to work on the circuit, so at Porsche we used a lot of time circuit testing. With circuit testing you also get the opinion of the driver, this is really essential to racing, you get a more stable and realistic meaning. Yes, at Porsche, we had our own test track where we could go at a minute’s notice. But, the truth of any positive work on the dyno or wind tunnel has to be on the road.
