Joest Porsche 962 Captured Vintage Racing At Spa

This fire-spitting racer isn't ready for retirement
www.thedrive.com

Share

The late production 962 race cars are among our favorite Porsche racers. With this sharp nose, and the detached wing hanging off the back, it’s almost difficult to believe that it’s based on the same basic platform as the earliest 956s that debuted over a decade earlier in 1982. While the competition had moved forward and left the 962 a bit behind, this one still looks stunning 25 years later, running around the iconic Belgian circuit. 

Spa has a special place in the hearts of many Porsche fanatics, and watching this video brings out exactly why. Seeing a Porsche-built prototype spitting and sputtering its way through the Ardennes forest brings with it all of the significance of every win Porsche has ever had at this track. Hearing the turbocharged flat six bleat its exhaust note through the quiet and echo-laden wooded trackside is like a trip back in time. It’s almost like Spa exists in its own time, neither here in the real world, nor in the past. Some unknowable time vortex where all times exist simultaneously. 

This video from Historic Racing tracks the well known ‘FAT’ 962 as it bounds across the curbs of the Belgian track during what appears to be a two-car Gruppe C revival race. Watching this 962 running flat out, defending against a Mercedes prototype of similar vintage is spectacular, and brings me back to the days when I was a child again. There was no greater period of endurance racing than international Gruppe C regulation racing of the 80s and 90s. The golden age of motorsport. I can’t help but stand up and make notice of the owners of these cars actually taking them to the track and using them as they were intended to be used. Porsche would be proud.