Daytona Porsche adventures

1971 Daytona 24 Hours. This is the Siffert-Bell Gulf Porsche 917 that failed to finish. On the left, one can recognise Derek Bell about to take his turn at the wheel, after Jo Siffert started the race. You can tell this is the first pitstop for this car by the Saturday sunset, the fact that Bell’s driving suit is clean, and the front end of the 917 shows little damage from debris on the track.

“When the car retired with engine damage after 113 laps, the front end looked like it had been sandblasted by all kind of crap at 200 mph plus”, remembers spectator Alexandre Salgueiro. That should be the end of the story for this 917 but as the race unfolded, it would be instrumental in the overall victory of the other Gulf 917K being driven by Pedro Rodriguez and Jackie Oliver.

He continues: “Fast forward to noon on Sunday and I was going to lunch when Oliver brought in the leading (by over 200 miles) 917, ahead of schedule. Problem, the transmission was stuck in high gear. There was a simple solution to this, and they had plenty of time to do it.”

“Just swap the broken transmission for a good one, like Ford did more than a dozen times at Daytona in 1967. Only problem was, after 1967, the FIA changed the rules because big bucks Ford could afford to have a dozen transmission spares ready for use but the outspent European team did not.”

So the FIA decided that swapping was outlawed. Instead, you had to totally rebuild the transmission. And that is exactly what the marvellous Gulf (JWA) mechanics did. They took parts from the transmission of the car on the photo, to rebuild Olivers’ car, that duly went on to win (picture below).