For Sale: 1997 Porsche 993 GT1

Images via Mark Donaldson

This 1997 Porsche 993 GT1 took third in the 1998 24 Hours of Daytona, has FIA GT Championship and 24 Hours of Le Mans history and was successful in the British GT Championship. It’s up for sale at Mark Donaldson.

After a successful season with the 993 GT1 in 1996, the Porsche works teams moved on to the 996 Evolution, offering the 993 GT1 as a customer car in 1997. This car, 993-104, was ordered new by Carl Rosenblad of Julius Racing and is one of five delivered to Mugello, Italy, in March 1997 for testing and handover. There, the Kremer Racing team ran the car with Rosenblad, Christophe Bouchot and Klaus ‘König’ Ludwig.

993-104’s debut came at the Hockenheimring, where it finished 8th overall in the FIA GT Championship round in April. Its next outing would be the 1997 24 Hours of Le Mans, in which it was driven by Christophe Bouchut, Andy Evans and Bertrand Gachot. With the GT1s struggling with engine reliability, it retired 207 laps in as the highest-placed customer car.

Porsche replaced the engine in time for the FIA GT Nürburgring 4 Hours a few weeks later and Christophe Bouchut and Carl Rosenblad would drive it to 9th. The car competed through the rest of the 1997 FIA GT Championship season, but did not crack the top ten again.

The car kicked off 1998 with a bang, contesting the 24 Hours of Daytona entered by Larbre Competition. Rosenblad shared the drive with Bouchut, Patrice Goueslard and André Ahrlé and the team climbed to the podium, taking third behind Rohr Motorsport’s GT1 Evo and the Ferrari 333 SP of Doran-Moretti Racing.

993-104 then went to compete in the British GT Championship. Under Millennium Motorsports and driven by John Nielsen and Thorkild Thyrring the car took 5th at Silverstone, improved to 4th at Oulton Park and won the Croft race overall.

Team Dynamics would enter the car in its final race for 1998, the Formula 1 support race at Silverstone, and David Leslie and Matt Neal would drive it to third overall.

In 1999 the GT1 returned to the British GT Championship, now run by G-Force Motorsport in its aging 993 specification. In the final round of the year at Silverstone it took second overall and retired from its period competition career on a high note.

At the conclusion of its period career, the car was put into storage and stayed there until 2005, when Rosenblad gave it a refresh and had the engine rebuilt. It was then used for promotion, running only briefly. In 2010 it was restored to the livery of its third place finish in the 1998 24 Hours of Daytona and sold to a Swiss collector, who eventually sold it to Mark Donaldson.

2016 has seen it recommissioned by Aldo Riti of Riverside Performance Engineering, including some sympathetic conversion to allow it to be road registered. With the engine in good shape, the turbos were rebuilt and the car received a new fuel cell as well as fuel lines and belts. A MoTeC system was installed to provide logging and mapping, with the original Tagtronics system kept and able to be restored down the line. A custom exhaust including catalytic converters was also installed.

The car’s steering rack was rebuilt, as were its Bilstein dampers, and slightly softer springs were installed for road use. The team replaced the original carbon discs and pads with steel discs and rebuilt the calipers. New BBS wheels matching the dimensions of the road GT1’s were installed, as was a handbrake and a few other road necessities like locking fuel caps, sliding windows and twin cooling fan.

Throughout this process the car’s originality and integrity has been protected and all related parts are included in its sale, as is a collection of spares and a history file including original purchase documents and correspondence with the factory during the 1997 season.

Featuring a significant and successful race history, this 1997 Porsche 993 GT1 is an awesome example of Porsche’s racing 911s. Its current UK road registration gives you the option to use it on the streets, or return it to race-spec for a hot-blooded racing machine with a great history.

It’s up for sale at Mark Donaldson, and you can find the full details on their website here.

Images via Mark Donaldson