Porsche may have pulled its front-running 919 Hybrid
prototypes from Le Mans, but it’ll still be there this year – just not in the
top class. In fact there’ll be no fewer than ten of its 911 RSRs competing in
the GT classes, and two of them will wear the classic liveries you see here.
Like the one-off 918 Spyder we brought you the other
day, this rose-colored 911 RSR brings back the Pink Pig livery immortalized by
the 917/20 in 1971. That experimental prototype was already looking rather
bulbous, so the racing engineers in Weissach painted it to look like a
butcher’s diagram. Dubbed the Pink Pig (or the Trufflehunter of Zuffenhausen),
it didn’t perform particularly well in that sole appearance at the race, but
its unusual appearance sealed its place in the history books.
As historically accurate as the revived
truffle-hunter may be, we’re more enamored of the second car, in white and
blue. And history favors that livery, too: it recalls the Rothmans scheme that
was worn by the 956 and 962 that each won Le Mans overall twice, and the 959
that won the Paris-Dakar rally in ’86. (Damon Hill and Jacques Villeneuve also
won their F1 world championships, and Ayrton Senna died, wearing that same
livery at Williams.)
Car number 91 wearing the Rothmans livery will be
driven by Gianmaria Bruni (of Italy), Richard Lietz (Austria), and Frédéric
Makowiecki (France). Car number 92 in the Pink Pig livery will be shared by
Kévin Estre (France), Michael Christensen (Denmark), and Laurens Vanthoor (Belgium).
There’ll be another two factory and six privateer-entered 911 RSRs on the grid
as well, bringing the total up to ten.
