Porsche 935/78 ‘Moby Dick’ Has 17-Year-Old Driver
Racing prodigy Dan Harper is learning the art of racing in a Le Mans legend.
If you were to peek inside Dan Harper’s wardrobe, hanging alongside his sponsor-laden Porsche overalls, brilliant white race boots, and bespoke helmet, you might be surprised to find a well-worn blazer and a school tie. When Harper won the coveted Porsche GB Junior driver program late last year, he was just 16 years-old and ineligible for a U.K. driving license. Now 17, he is about to start racing a 485bhp rear-wheel drive 911 GT3 Cup in the 2018 Carrera Cup, and is still in full time education.
Porsche’s improbably busy new prodigy made an excellent showing at the recent 76th Goodwood Members’ Meeting. This was Harper’s first time at Goodwood. Unusually for mid-March, the temperature in southern England has plunged below freezing, with an icy wind roaring through the paddock and snow settling on the grass around the famously unforgiving 2.3-mile motor circuit.
Now, if you were 17, had only held your driving licence for three months and were about to drive round a fast, pre-safety era circuit, in the snow, in front of tens of thousands of strangers, the car you wouldn’t choose to do it in would be a low-drag 1970s Le Mans racer with more than 800 bhp at the rear wheels and a massive insurance value. But Harper is not that kind of 17-year-old.
As the Porsche Museum technicians gradually built the revs, Moby Dick’s mighty turbocharged flat-six roared and rattled, its exhaust note reverberating around the garage. Harper was eager to get going and apparently free from any sort of nerves.
“My father was a rally mechanic and ran WRC cars in the Irish Tarmac Rally Championship,” Harper explains. “His workshop was at the house, so basically since I was born I’ve been around motorsport. It’s in my family’s blood. I got my first quad when I was six and since then I haven’t been out of a seat. So, it all started very early, but it’s a long journey.”
A long journey, maybe, but it has also been remarkably rapid, as the last few months have proven. “I passed my test last December. I only turned 17 on the 8th. People took the mickey a bit while the Porsche Junior shootout program was going as I was 16 and couldn’t drive, but it’s very cool to be able to drive a beast like a 911 GT3 at the age of 16. Not many people have done that.”
‘I got my first quad when I was six and since then I haven’t been out of a seat. So, it all started very early, but it’s a long journey.’
Fewer still have gotten behind the wheel of Moby Dick, one of Porsche’s most instantly recognizable racers, and for many as revered and important a car as the Salzburg 917K or the 919 Hybrid.
Luckily for Dan, on hand to share driving duties today is none other than Jochen Mass, the man who raced Moby Dick at Le Mans in 1978. Jochen took the first stint, putting some much-needed heat into the tyres before handing over to Dan in an apposite pit-lane driver change.
Jochen Mass was in the car already, grinning from ear to ear to be back in the office. Mass is a veteran both of scary era F1 and some of the best days of sports car racing, having tackled Le Mans for Porsche in the 956, 962, and 936 alongside his ’78 DNF in Moby Dick.
Surrounding him were period rivals such as the Ferrari 512, Lancia Beta Montecarlo, and a brace of BMW 320 Turbos. Everywhere you looked there were giant front splitters, steroidal wheel arches, and monumental rear wings. Exhausts pop, engines bark and the air is filled with the evocative aroma of genuinely nasty old school emissions.
When the driving got underway it was clear Mass has lost none of his competitive edge, hurling this priceless one-off museum piece up the pit straight and into the first corner. The track was slick with oil after two full days of pre- and post-war historic racing, the short grass run-off is still covered in snow and the tyre walls – well there aren’t any at Goodwood.
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