I see Porsche in Le Mans, Cup Races, and some other Gruppe events but why no F1??? Can someone educate me on this?

 

$1.5 billion to become competitive would be my guess...

 

In a nutshell, huge annual investment with limited return. Unlike Ferrari Porsche is a company that makes most decisions based on return on investment. Would I personally like to see Porsche involved in Formula 1, for sure but their bottom line would go down the tubes.

 

No "big daddy" corporate owner selling millions of other cars per year to amortize/hide the true costs .

 

Porsche is smart though. they do advertise in the F1 without actually be in the race.

 

They surley have the $ more so then Ferrari.

 

hehe very good point

i suppose the cost outweighs their potential gains from having a presence in F1.

you have to realize porsche cares very much about money these days, they are slightly losing touch with their racing history/soul.

they must think like a corporation, sure it would be nice to have a racing presence, but they will sell their road cars anyway.

however, companies like renault, ferrari, they need F1 to differentiate/place them above their competitors.

 

Tom were u trying to say anything??

 

no Arling, just padding my post count per usualé

 

This is the reason, IMO. Ferrari has Fiat to bankroll their playing in F1. Plus, even more so than Porsche, Ferrari lives on a knife's edge. If their popularity goes down even a little, since their sales are so limited, they could take a serious drubbing financially. They need to be in people's faces and keep a high profile.

Porsche may have "lost touch" with its racing soul, but would Porsche owners/fans prefer a Porsche that raced, but was owned by VW? Hmm, interesting poll idea.

 

interesting for a company that does zero advertising. it's cute though when porsche advertises their SUV during the big boys race.

 

A valid point, but could Ferrari survive without the street cred racing gives it? I dunno, but it seems Porsche has "diversified" itself away from racing enough to be able to survive not doing it. Could Ferrari do the same thing?

I especially like how they directly market the SUV to women, at least with respect to that one commercial.

I find it humorous when any particular Porsche is called "a woman's car" because truth be told, when I look behind the wheel of almost any Porsche, more often than not it is a woman driving. Especially if you are talking the older, "classic" 911s. lol

 

Porsche has had only one foray (as a car company anyway) into Formula 1. That was in the early 60's. After a time of success in F2 they went "up market to F1". Dan Gurney was one of thier drivers. He did win ONE race but the whole experience was not good for them. Also it wasn't connected as closely they felt with their fan base, which was in sports cars.

Early on Porsche designed an F1 car for Cisitalia and the legend is that this funded the sports car beginnings.

Also Porsche did the engine design and production (I think) for the "TAG" (Technique D'Avant Guarde) motors for MacClaren in the Turbo era. These motors were very successful in the chassis.

In other single seater venues Porsche has had mixed results. They did build some Indy cars driven by Danny Ongais and Teo Fabi amongst others. These also did not do very well. I know a fellow in our local club who has one of the moncoques from Porsche and he has fitted it with a flat six normally aspirated motor to drive.

But, in the final analysis Porsche without some substantial outside backing would probably be ill advised to get into F1.

As I've said before the Porsche Cup cars and RSR's are truly developments from our street cars and there may be more racing DNA earned for the street cars that way anyway.

But.........I'd still love to see them back into prototypes at LeMans!

 

Who gives a crap. F1 is so ****in' boring this season anyways. It's like watchin' Bobby Fisher play speed chess.

 

I thought this season was actually turning out pretty interesting. It is nice to see toyota doing well.