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Porsche 944 Challenge
by Sean Henshelwood
A controlled one-make series that works
As featured in; 321 Ignition Magazine #2
One of the best low-cost one-make categories in Australia is the result of a vision by aPorschaPart proprietor Dennis O’Keefe. A former Porsche Cup competitor, rising costs and constantly changing rules put a temporary end to his career, before a vision came to him one fateful day over a glass of red..
"During 1998 I was talking to a mate over a bottle of red about the benefit of campaigning a 944 as a racecar. Every week we were wrecking them and it seemed a real shame, they’re such a good car, so I made a few calls and set up a meeting at the workshop and was staggered by the attendance.. From there it basically all fell into place and we’ve been running happily ever since."
One of the men that spoke to Dennis about the proposal was very well versed on the popular German marque -JOCARO head-honcho Calvin Pusterla. A founding member of the category, he was an immediate convert and his prestige Porsche race preparation business was perfectly placed to build cars both for Calvin himself and for his burgeoning customer base.
"They’re a fantastic little car," Calvin agreed. "They’re basically bullet-proof. Not only is the engine strong, but the chassis is incredibly stiff," something Dennis O’Keefe can attest to. "I had a big one at Sandown a couple of years ago, and hit the fence on the run to Dandenong Road corner pretty hard. It messed the car up pretty badly and looked like it would be a write-off, but after pulling it down, it was clear just how solid the chassis was because we straightened it out and I’m still running it."
"You’ve only got to look at the side-sill construction to see how strong they are. They’re soft in the rails to the strut towers, but from there back they’re a very strong car," Calvin confirmed.
One of the 944 categories big attractions is it’s heritage - Porsche. "The engines are built to rev hard, the chassis is stiff and the balance is typically Porsche, so it really is an ideal basis for a race car," Calvin agreed. "They’re not particularly powerful, but they’re a great racecar to learn in, whether as a younger driver looking to hone their skills, or for the gentleman racer who is making their competition debut."
The team at JOCARO are arguably the experts in the category having built as many as 18 cars for customers, and despite not competing himself any more (due to time constraints and too many customers) Calvin and his team still attend all 944 races for their many clients (JOCARO had seven drivers to look after at the recent Phillip Island round).
"We used to lease cars and offer arrive-and-drive packages, but now we just maintain, prepare and transport a number of cars for customers."
So how competitive is the category, and what restrictions if any are in place to keep the class within reasonable constraints?
"The nature of the sport is that everyone wants to go faster, so now there’s teams that are pushing the performance boundaries with the engines, but the nature of the class is such that we want to try and control performance modifications and are looking at the possibility of a moratorium on modifications.
"In recent years we’ve built engines to a compression ratio of around 10.6-10.8:1 whereas now they are being pushed to 11.5:1 in the name of performance. Certainly it gives you an edge, but so too can setup and driver performance. The price you pay though for a power increases is in engine life, which is why this season you’ve seen for the first time, a number of engine failures. In reality there are engines in cars out there that haven’t been touched in three years, yet they are in cars capable of podium finishes..."
What about maintenance?
"Like any race car, it comes down to what you want to do. For most of our customers we store, transport and maintain their cars between rounds, and regularly spanner check them and look at anything that might need repairing or replacing, but as I said, they’re pretty bullet-proof. It really comes down to tyres, brake pads (a control item sourced from Howard Reynolds Race Brakes) and fuel from round to round. Some replace pads every event, others replace them every three races, it’s up to the individual.
What provides you the greatest advantage in terms of modifications to the car?
"The suspension at this stage is free, so there’s a lot to be picked up there, mostly in shocks and springs. Your pickup points are fixed, so it’s predominantly on the adjustments you can make to shocks - a number of guys use two-way adjustable Konis, in past years we’ve done a lot of work with Ohlins.. To keep costs contained a little though, no shocks are allowed that have canisters.
"Outside of dampers, some have done away with swaybars and gone to blade adjusters.. Springs again are up to the individual, as are spring rates, but they’re a trade secret…"
"Engine modifications are starting to become more prevalent, although most just stick with the allowance of minimum part weights which allow for basic reconditioning of original parts. One good thing about the class is that we have our own technical adjudicator (Tim Mance) to keep an eye on modifications and we often strip cars. Every car would go through the process once every two years, and some are chosen at random to try and ensure that everything is kept above board.
"We’re really trying to keep a handle on developments and do what we can to control the costs so that it doesn’t get out of hand.
"One thing that we’ve discovered for instance now that people are pushing the limits with the compression ratio, is that the Wolf 3D engine management system we have doesn’t work as well with the new specification engines, so a mapping modification has been required which means that we have to put a new upgrade into the system - negligible I know, but more cost."
What are they like to drive?
"They’re pretty easy to drive, but you have to be smooth. They don’t have the horsepower of say a 996 Porsche, but they probably corner just as fast as anything else. Top speed at somewhere like Phillip Island would be about 230 km/h, so it’s not mind-blowing by any stretch, but they are a fun car to drive.
"The beauty of the class is that the cars are so well matched, that there’s racing right through the field. From the super-serious guys at the front, to the not so serious guys out there to have fun with their mates, every one gets the chance to actually compete against an opponent. The social side too is something that the class was built on, Dennis (O’Keefe) often claims that things are always going okay with the class if you can still all enjoy a nice glass of red afterwards…
What would a new car cost?
"You can buy them second-hand, and quite good cars for about $25-30K. We’ve built brand new cars for around the $35-40K mark, but a home-builder or an enthusiast could build an okay car possibly for under $30K.
"As an example, you can get a donor 944 these days for as little as $4000-5000, and a the engine can be stripped, balanced, machined and rebuilt for between
$6-10K depending on what it needs. Then it’s just cage, wheels and sundry safety items and control parts that will bring it up to spec and you’re away…"
Dennis O’Keefe
How did it start?
Basically I needed to get back into motor racing - in the early days I’d raced in Porsche Cup until the financial aspects of competing in the class killed that avenue for me, and after 10-12 years in this business (APorschaPart) I decided that it was time to go racing again, but I really wanted to do it in an economical way.
Knowing how I’d felt through a number of years in Porsche Cup as a competitor with rising costs and rules being constantly modified, I thought about what you’d need to make a series happen and just sat down one day with a piece of paper and formulated the rules for the 944 Challenge - it only took about an hour because simplicity was the rule of thumb.
I’d actually been watching European one-make series in getting the business up and running, so it was a fairly obvious line of attack really - to try and keep the vehicles as standard as possible, keep the rules as simple as possible and really make it a drivers series rather than a moneyfest.
So why not a 924, 928 or 911?
A 924 wouldn’t have taken off in this country; 944’s were in abundance, we had quite a lot in stock.. The 924 and the 944 though are a whole different ball-game, the 944 has a better braking system, it has a Porsche engine and not an Audi motor - it’s a better looking car, it’s wider and more in the Porsche tradition than the 924.
The 928 - although we love the sound of it, becomes an expensive car to maintain and parts are much more difficult to find, and it was more difficult to find manual gearbox 928s, where most of the 944s around the world are manuals. Even with the 944, before the series started we decided to replace all the expensive front panels with fibreglass replicas to keep the costs down.
Is left or right-hand drive best?
The perception is that a left-hand drive 944 is a superior race package, which is due to the fact that the car’s were originally designed left-hand drive, so that when they slanted the motor, they slanted it to the right-hand side of the car, they also needed to bias the fuel tank and it’s capacity to the right hand side of the car to counterweight the driver as well.
In deciding the rules we established a limit of 1100kg for driver and car combination which virtually allows a right-hand drive car to be corner-weighted, provided they get the basic car down to weight, so technically there’s no great advantage - theoretically there is, but I don’t believe there is..
How strong a vehicle are they?
Enormously.. My life has been saved a couple of times.. I would have no fear in rolling one of these cars without a cage.
I’ve had a side impact at 160 km/h and almost walked away from it, just suffered a bit of pain where the belts grabbed me. I honestly believe that in any other car I would have been killed.
They have very high and tough sill sections, the tunnel is very strong and very high and the rails are right through the car. To me they’re one of the toughest cars out there.
What is best? Buying a car or building a car?
A reasonable race car these days which would put you midfield, and I have to stress that the results of any car/driver combination is nine tenths driver. We have a couple of cars here that are capable of mid-field running and they’re available for a figure in the mid-$20s. A car capable of being in the top three is around $30-ish.
A number of the guys running with us now have been in other categories, and they openly admit that it is the cheapest category they have ever competed in, by far.. My budget is $1000 per round and that includes tyres, accommodation, the lot.. You can’t even do a Formula Vee for that.
I budget for two and a half sets of tyres per year. Even mechanical work, I’ve just rebuilt my engine after four years and it was still capable of running inside the top ten, even though it was a little tired. Controlling the cost of what we put into it, I kept the price down to about three and a half grand, and we did everything.
With a donor car you’ve got to be careful not to buy too cheaply because it can end up costing you, but you need to by a road car, preferably a local delivery car (sent to Australia when originally built) which will cost you around $8000 maximum. From there, provided you did a bit of work yourself, you could have a good car for another $20,000.
I’m biased of course, but they’re cheap, they’re simple, they’re tough, yet they last, and the maintenance is virtually nothing in racecar terms.
- Sean Henshelwood
© 321 IGNITION Pty Ltd 2007
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