This weekend marked the second Daytona Classic 24 “Group C/GTP” class victory for this 1987 No. 14 Porsche Kremer Racing/Leyton House 962C driven by Tommy Dreelan and Aaron Scott. Thanks to this awesome video from Racer.com, we’re given a bit of insight into what it’s like to drive one of these glorious beasts from yesteryear. At night. On the high banks of Daytona. This is such a surreal and supremely excellent video that I’ve now watched it a half-dozen times. With the roar of a turbocharged flat-six engine behind, and the headlights illuminating ahead, this video is just pure awesome. Suddenly, I have a desire to buy a vintage race car and run it at Daytona into the hours of darkness.
It’s almost other-worldly riding on board this Porsche-shaped spaceship. The light bounces off the track ahead from the high overhead lighting, spaced out in perfectly determined gaps. The skies ahead are as black as pitch, and the view of the banking ahead seems impossibly tilted. It messes with your head. You feel like you’re about to make the jump to hyperspace, and the universe is warping around you. In the movies, however, space ship engines are never this sonorous or audible, even. You know that the lap is always going to end at start/finish, just like it always does, but it feels like this time, possibly, you could end up on some distant faraway planet. This kind of speed just changes what feels like could be possible.
Most of us will never get to experience driving a wild prototype like a 962 on the banks of Daytona. The lucky few will get to drive their street cars at Daytona. There are a few wild GT-based race cars in this category that are massively more competitive at this track than any of our street cars could ever hope to be, and this 80s Group C hero simply walks right by them as though they’re standing still. A 962C is simply mega.