Rennsport 7: 'Even for Porsche addicts, this festival is almost too much'

In the end there was just one sentiment, agreed upon by all: no other car company in the world could have created an event like Rennsport 7. As the name suggests, this is the seventh Rennsport Reunion, but the first for five years thanks, in part, to Covid. No one involved in its organisation is predicting when Rennsport 8 might be. ‘We’re just too bloody tired,’ as one of its more senior prime movers put it to me.

Rennsport is best thought of as an event with a race programme like the Goodwood Revival, but a festival feel like, well, the Goodwood Festival of Speed. But it takes place in California not West Sussex and involves only Porsches, which come in their thousands to Laguna Seca to be displayed, demonstrated, raced or just parked up for upwards of 80,000 Porsche addicts to see.

There are other differences too: there’s very little razzmatazz at Rennsport, no dressing up, no fireworks displays and hardly any theatre. It’s just Porsches, of every kind you might imagine, and plenty more you probably cannot. My eyes were rather taken, for instance, by a 1970s 911 Targa set up for off-road rallying with additional wheel clearance for its long travel suspension achieved seemingly by taking a pair of tin snips to the wheel arches.

The very first Porsche, 356-001 as it is known was there, just parked up in the paddock, not so much as a length of twine to rope it off. Swarmed over for four days straight, when I left on Sunday afternoon, it still didn’t have a mark on it. The 356 that won its class at Le Mans in 1951 – the first significant competition success of any Porsche – was being gaily flung around the track, as was its latest, the 963 LMDh hybrid.

But actually, and to me at least, the cars were secondary. It was the people, for there can never have been, at any time, anywhere in the world, a greater density of the great and the good of Porsche’s racing history. Forgive the list, but without it, it’s hard to appreciate just how many flew in from all over the world to be here. So, and craving forgiveness for those I may have missed, I saw: Jochen Mass, Derek Bell, Mark Webber, Gijs van Lennep, John Fitzpatrick, David Hobbs, Jackie Oliver, Jacky Ickx, Rudi Lins, Hurley Haywood, Vern Schuppan, Norbert Singer, Brian Redman, Joerg Bergmeister, Marc Lieb, Stefan Johansson, Thierry Boutsen, Timo Bernhard, Nick Tandy, Danny Sullivan and George Follmer.

And you forget that it’s not just the public who gets a kick out of seeing and speaking to them, they do too: old team-mates who’d not seen each other for years, people who risked their lives to do what they love, reunited after far too long apart. You’d find them in small clumps, gossiping and giggling away, then spending hours signing autographs and doing selfies with the fans.

If it lacked anything save other brands compared to, say, a Goodwood Revival, it was that the racing was not of the balls-to-the-wall variety found just outside Chichester. It was safer, more respectful and less exciting as a result. Then again, Laguna Seca is a fabulous circuit, not just as a driver, but a spectator too: climb the steep hill to the Corkscrew and you can not only see the cars three-wheeling their way down the hill, you can do a 180 degree turn, walk a few steps and then see them around most of the rest of the lap too.

It was almost too much. You’d find yourself wandering past an IMSA-specification 962 here, the 917 PA Spyder there, Denny Hulme’s IROC RSR in one corner, the infamous 804 F1 car in another, and after a while barely notice them. After three days even I was thoroughly sated, no longer able to appreciate fully what I was seeing. But, 24 hours later, I’m better now. Like everyone else I have no idea when Rennsport 8 might be, but I do know this: when and wherever it is, I will be there.