The event was superb. Great new facility, tremendous speakers and expertise, and interesting off-line conversations. My 4-hr drive was more than worth it. Another one is being planned for later this year, in Ontario Canada, if you missed this one and have the chance to make that one, do not miss it, you will not be disappointed.
One of the most interesting sessions was presented by Dr. Frank Walliser from Porsche AG, who is the head of the 918 Spyder program. His presentation gave us a little bit of the history of how the project came about and how he got involved in it, which is a great story and he tells it with flare. Basically, the 918 is the successor of the Carrera GT and has several technological transfers from the RS Spyder ALMS race car, which Dr. Frank was the project lead of that vehicle as well, so you can see the connection
Of course the 918 adds the hybrid and 4-wheel drive technologies; as well as PDK on top of what the RS Spyder had. Just as in the past the race cars heavy influenced the street cars at Porsche with direct technology transfer, the same connection is there in several areas between the RS Spyder and 918 Spyder. Currently there are no rule sets that support the concept of 918 RSR, so there aren't any definitive answers for it to be fully developed for racing in ALMS/LMS.
As they were setting up the performance targets for the 918 as with several other high-performance models, they seem to summarize it with a two-dimmensional chart; the x-axis is the fuel efficiency (CO2 emissions) and the y-axis is the 'ring lap time. So, in general terms, the target is to significantly improve emissions while at least maintaining the performance delivery levels to that of the highest performing current models. This seems critical as the market place is changing from pure horsepower wars to environmentally friendly performance. For Porsche to keep its relevance, it knows that they cannot give up on existing performance, but have to improve energy efficiency by several fold. The good news is that they believe, and many market experts also believe, Porsche has the answer and is ahead of pretty much everyone that matters.
Dr. Frank or any other PCNA or PAG representatives will not talk or confirm the existence of the 991 model line at this time. They were more secretive about that than the 918, and I am sure for good reason too. Summary of my impression after an hour-long presentation by Dr. Frank was that the next 10-15 years are probably going to be one of the most exciting periods in company's history, second only to the first 10 years from a product development perspective.
Another very pleasant point for me to observe was that our PCA is clearly very close to PCNA and PAG, and PAG has long acknowledged how influential PCA is in many respects. Manny and Vu are truly excellent ambassadors from this regard.