Norbert Singer's first project at Porsche, indeed
it was essentially his first job out of engineering school, was to
design
cooling ducts on Porsche's 917 - the car which earned Porsche its first
overall LeMans win and which, some say, put Porsche "on the map."
Surely
there was much more to the 917's success than its cooling ducts, no
matter
how brilliantly they probably worked! But Singer nevertheless showed
his
potential remarkably quickly. In 1973, just three years after he
started,
Singer was put in charge of entire race car projects, such as those
listed
below, beginning with none other than the Carrera RSR. If the 917 put
Porsche
on the map, then the RSR gave them their own page in the atlas, in its
very first race. And that was Singer's fantastic entry on to the stage
of international motorsports.
Singer's official racing projects, according to
Christophorus, are listed chronologically in bold
in the center column of the following pages. But he has apparently,
and understandably, been very involved in other projects at Porsche as
well. Paul Frere refers on page 314 of his excellent book Porsche
911
Story (Patrick Stevens Ltd., 1997 http://www.haynes.com)
to "...Norbert Singer, responsible for all racing Porsches, except for
the production based models, for the last 20 years..."
Please send
me any additional information you can share, including any stories
or other photos.
But first - where else can you experience a Singer creation?
Click on the image and climb in! for a lap of Portland
International
Raceway with Alan McNish driving the Champion Porsche GT1 EVO
in
the American LeMans race. (Is this a full service club or what?) This
is
digital
in-car footage from American
LeMans Radio. They did a great job catching the mechanical sounds,
too. Listen for the turbos between shifts. It's
a 1,404KB Real Media (RM) file. You may need to download and save it to
your computer first. Try right-clicking on the image, then select "save
link as..." or "save as". Once it is through downloading, then click on
it. You'll need a copy of Real Media or its equivalent on your computer
to run it.