With the meeting of two rally legends Porsche brings motorsport history to live at the Nürburgring weekend of the Porsche Carrera Cup Deutschland. Sweden’s Björn Waldegard visits Europe’s fastest one make championship and the DTM at the Nürburgring. On Sunday from 14.00 hrs the 1979 World Rally Champion turns demonstration laps in the Paris-Dakar winning Porsche 959 from 1986. The 2.8-litre twin turbo six cylinder of this fourwheeldrive Porsche had an output of 400 hp for the 10,000 kilometre marathon through Africa and was geared for a top speed of 210kph.
In the co-driver’s seat Björn will have the winners of a raffle with which the DTM promoted the Nürburgring round at the Deutschland Rally.
Waldegard (63) is one of the most successful Porsche rally drivers. He won the Rally Monte Carlo on a 911 at his first attempt in a works car in 1969 to go on and clinch victory from his home event, the Sweden Rally. In 1970 Björn repeated his Monte Carlo success. Waldegard tackled the East African Safari twice for the factory, finishing second in 1975.
During his career Björn Waldegard won 16 World Championship rounds, amongst them such different events like the icy and ultra fast Sweden or the Sanremo Rally, and four times the toughest of them all, the East African Safari.
Especially looking forward to meeting Waldegard again is Helmut Greiner, the Manager of the Porsche Carrera Cup Deutschland: “We share a few memories. There was that Safari Rally back in 1978, when I was in a chase car for Porsche. We picked up Björns emergency call: He was amongst the front runners, but the throttle valves got stuck. So we drove for an hour through the Savannah like hell to get to him. Then we got him running. He missed the podium finishing fourth, but at least he made it back to Nairobi. There was quite a lot of adrenaline involved. Today it’s a great memory of a wild and adventurous era of motorsport.”