For this weekend’s 12 Hours of Sebring endurance event, Porsche Penske Motorsport has given its race cars a retro makeover.
Both the Porsche 963 LMDh prototypes will wear a special Mobil 1 livery, paying tribute to one of the German marque’s most recognizable endurance racers.
The color scheme celebrates three decades of collaboration between Porsche and Mobil 1, and honors an important motorsport victory for the historic 911 GT1.
Porsche will hope the bespoke livery brings the Penske Motorsport team good luck this weekend, allowing the 963 to repeat its 1-2 finish in the 12 Hours of Sebring last year.
Remembering the 911 GT1
The Mobil 1 colors were used on the 993-based Porsche 911 GT1 racing car, which first competed in the 1996 BPR Global GT Series.
FIA GT1 rules of the time were designed to see racing cars developed from street-legal production vehicles. However, Porsche stretched the regulations to their limits with the extreme 911 GT1.
A rear subframe from the legendary Porsche 962 Group C prototype was combined with the front end of a contemporary 911 sports car. The result was a mid-engined racer powered by a twin-turbocharged 3.2-liter flat-six that delivered 600 horsepower.
Porsche then produced a pair of street-legal 911 GT1 Strassenversion (road version) cars to comply with homologation rules.
The start of a successful partnership
Along with entering the BPR Global GT Series, which later became the FIA GT Championship, the Porsche 911 GT1 also entered the 24 Hours of Le Mans for the first time in 1996.
Despite the 911 GT1 being in its first season of competition, it proved highly effective during qualifying for the French endurance race. Finishing in second and third place further demonstrated the potential, and the reliability, of the Mobil 1-liveried GT1.
What made the Mobil 1 color scheme more significant that weekend was the signing of an agreement between the sports car manufacturer and the US energy company. This ensured Mobil 1 would provide the factory-fill lubricants for all new Porsche vehicles.
Aiming for a 30th anniversary win
These 30 years of collaboration will be marked by the throwback Mobil 1 livery, as Porsche aims for further success at Sebring.
“Even with the current Porsche 963, we benefit in many areas from Mobil 1’s innovations and expertise,” said Urs Kuratle, director of Porsche’s LMDh program.
“In the tightly contested IMSA series, the smallest details make the difference – and recently we have consistently been at the front. The championship titles in the past two years and another victory at the 24 Hours of Daytona in January underline this. Together with all our partners, we want to keep winning in this anniversary year.”
This is not the first time Porsche has brought back its famed Mobil 1 colors. For the brand’s 70th anniversary in 2018, it used a later 1998 version of the 911 GT1 livery for the Petit Le Mans race.
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