Famous Five... Porsche's F1 powerplants

One of Porsche’s management-board bigwigs, Lutz Meschke, held discussions with Ross Brawn, F1’s Motorsport MD, during last weekend’s Italian Grand Prix and he has admitted the sport’s future direction is an attractive proposition for the company. How it would sit alongside its commitment to the all-electric Formula E series remains to be seen.

A 2021 return to F1 would mark the end of a 30-year hiatus for Porsche at the pinnacle of the sport. And, perhaps surprisingly, its F1 CV makes for quite odd reading, thanks to a hit-and-miss career featuring cars with flat-four, flat-eight, V6 turbo and V12 powerplants.

On the grid as early as the late 1950s with a complete chassis-engine combination, it battled through to the mid-1960s, rarely troubling the front runners, winning just once before disappearing. Ironically, Porsche returned in a big way in the early 1980s, forming a partnership with McLaren that yielded three drivers’ titles and two constructors’ crowns with an engine that didn’t even have a Porsche badge on it. Oh, and its final hurrah more than a quarter of a century ago was so awful… well, you’ll have to read on. 

These, then, are five of Porsche’s famous or, in some cases, infamous Grand Prix engines from its irregular time in F1 between the 1950s and the 1990s.    

547 – 1957

Porsche’s F1 journey began at the Nürburgring’s German GP with three Formula 2-spec 550RS cars – two works entries for Edgar Barth and Umberto Maglioli and a privately entered chassis for Dutchman Carel Godin de Beaufort  – powered by the air-cooled 1.5-litre, flat-four engine. Barth and Maglioli qualified 12^th and 14^th, with the German finishing in the same place and the Italian retiring with engine failure while running 11^th. G de B brought his Ecurie Maarsbergen car home 14^th, bettering that performance in his home race in ’58 with 11^th.  

RSK – 1959-’64

The trusty 1.5-litre flat-four continued as the motivation of choice for Porsche via sporadic and unsuccessful outings in 1958. For the final year of F1’s first decade, a roster of top names was entrusted with it in the RSK and, later, the 787 and 718 chassis. Barth and de Beaufort were joined by aces Jean Behra, Wolfgang von Trips, Masten Gregory, Hans Herrmann, Jo Bonnier and Dan Gurney. Several points-placings were accrued, especially in 1961 when the 1.5-litre formula kicked in, with Gurney’s second in Reims’ French GP the best result. The flat-four would remain in active service among the privateer fraternity until mid-’64, but what the factory machines craved, though, was an eight-cylinder lump if they were to keep up with rival motivation from Climax, BRM and Ferrari…

753 – 1962

And that’s what they got, in the shape of the flat-eight 753. The new engine made its debut in the back of a pair of 804 chassis for Gurney and Bonnier at Zandvoort’s 1962 season-opening Dutch GP, with Swede Bonnier finishing seventh. After gearbox failure in Holland and a crash at Monaco, American Gurney finally made history for Porsche with victory in the French GP at Rouen. His win would be Porsche’s only F1 success as a constructor. At the end of 1962, following just one more podium finish – for Gurney in Germany – Porsche pulled the plug. 

TAG TTE P01 – 1983-’87

It would be more than 20 years before the Porsche name returned to F1, and even then its presence wasn’t obvious. McLaren boss Ron Dennis had commissioned Porsche to build a 1.5-litre V6 turbo with which his Woking-based squad could attempt to keep up with rivals from BMW, Honda and Renault in 1984. This it duly did, although the engine was branded in deference to McLaren’s long-term tie-up with Mansour Ojjeh’s TAG concern. The TTE P01, which made its debut in the 1983 Dutch GP in Niki Lauda’s McLaren MP4/1E and then powered his and teammate John Watson’s cars for the remaining three races of the year, blended supreme performance, and superlative reliability the following season. Lauda and Alain Prost won 12 of the 16 races and finished one-two in the title race, the Austrian pipping the Frenchman by half a point. Prost got his revenge in ’85, waltzing to his first title and securing the double in ’86. The Porsche-built TAG remained in the back of the McLarens in 1987, taking more wins, but the promise of Ayrton Senna and Honda for ’88 proved too appealing.   

3512 – 1991

Overweight and underpowered. Two words you wouldn’t associate with Porsche, but its 3.5-litre V12 3512 of 1991 was both those things. Bolted to the back of the Footwork (which had taken over Arrows) A11C at the start of 1991, it was hopelessly outclassed. Veteran hero Michele Alboreto scraped onto the back row of the grid in the season-opening GP on the streets of Phoenix – while team-mate Alex Caffi failed to qualify – only to retire at half-distance with, yup, engine failure. Both men failed to qualify in Brazil and San Marino, despite Caffi getting a new chassis, the FA12, to better accommodate the engine. Alboreto bravely got into the race in Monaco, but you can guess why he only made it to half-distance. Both cars raced in Canada, the second FA12 now pedaled by Stefan Johansson, and both suffered throttle issues. The final nail in the coffin came in Mexico, where Alboreto suffered another mid-race engine failure and Johansson failed to make the cut. For the next race, in France, the cars were fitted with Ford Cosworth units. Porsche had wisely gone off to lick its wounds.

Let’s hope any future Porsche participation is rather more successful.

Photography courtesy of LAT Images