It takes something truly special for long-time Porsche factory ace Marc Lieb to overlook the 911 GT3 RSR as his favourite car. Such is his passion for the machine in which he took a remarkable against-the-odds GT2 class win in the 2005 Le Mans 24 Hours with Mike Rockenfeller and Leo Hindery that, together with Rockenfeller, he now co-owns the ex-GruppeM car in which they dominated that year’s FIA GT championship.
Yet Lieb, now managing the sports communication of Porsche, has very good reason for selecting the previous GT3 RS model from the same 996 family of cars instead. And that’s because of events at the Spa 24 Hours in 2003.
Winning the race outright, with a car entered in the secondary N-GT category against the faster GT1 machinery, not unreasonably makes the GT3 RS his top pick. One of motorsport’s great shocks is no less remarkable a story for being so well-told.
In heavy rain, the rear-engined Freisinger Motorsport 911 Lieb shared with full-season FIA GT team-mate Stephane Ortelli and Romain Dumas had a traction advantage as the bigger cars struggled to get their power down, and was also impacted by aquaplaning due to its narrower Dunlop tyres. It helped too that Freisinger was strong on fuel economy, which was only accentuated by Ortelli repeatedly switching off the engine and coasting down the hill from Les Combes under a lengthy safety car – now part of the event’s folklore.
“In the dry, we were four or six seconds slower,” Lieb remembers as Autosport joins him in Porsche’s vast hospitality unit at the Le Mans 24 Hours. “But in the rain, we were one or two seconds faster. We created a big gap and even in the night, when it just started drying out a little bit, we always had the right tyre choices.
“The car was easy to handle and so drivable in the wet. We had a good fuel consumption and at that time, it was key for that race. We made sure to stretch every stint as far as possible.”
Larbre’s Viper was stronger whenever the rain eased, but had a series of minor issues even before a transmission change dropped it from contention, allowing the Freisinger car to take victory by eight laps after what Autosport described as “a near faultless run”. To Lieb, who celebrated his first win in a 24-hour contest, “it was just a perfect race” that established him as one of endurance racing’s rising stars and cemented his love for the GT3 RS.
“It's a special memory, that's why I like this car a lot,” he says of a car that had also claimed outright victory at the Daytona 24 Hours earlier that year.
Explaining his choice of the unassuming N-GT over another machine he is closely associated with, the Porsche 919 Hybrid LMP1 spaceship in which he won Le Mans outright and claimed the World Endurance Championship title in 2016, Lieb is clear that lap time isn’t everything. The pure enjoyment of driving the 996 model in which he first broke onto the scene with two wins from three FIA GT races in 2002, including on debut at Brno alongside champion Ortelli, is the greater consideration.
"I'm glad that I still got a little bit of time in that era as well. It's just a different way of driving"
Marc Lieb
“The 919 was complex, you had to use a lot of brain capacity,” he reflects. “Everything was faster; you had high downforce, and it was very enjoyable to run on sticker tyres for example on a qualifying lap at Le Mans or in Spa or something like that on low-fuel. Pulling into the Porsche Curves with 4G or something, it's amazing.
“But on the other side, the 996 RSR was a car with H-pattern gearbox, you had to work very hard to make it happen and could play a little bit with the driving styles. It was more old-school driving. How many drivers nowadays can heel-and-toe? We had to learn it and that's nice.
“It was just a good memory of doing long-distance races with a H-pattern gearbox, not doing any mistakes. You could always easily destroy your race with a mis-shift, and nowadays this cannot happen anymore.”
As for the car’s lack of creature comforts – it was merely typical of the period. These were days before basic conditions like a maximum cockpit temperature were prescribed by the regulations and ergonomics were not a priority.
“We had no air conditioning, no cooling vests, so the cars were really hot,” grins Lieb, who points out that during his main programme in 2002, winning the German Carrera Cup title, he was also driving a type 996 911. “It's just a different era, and I'm glad that I still got a little bit of time in that era as well. It's just a different way of driving.”
Lieb and Ortelli capped their 2003 season with the FIA GT’s N-GT title, having also taken victories at Brno and Donington, before he switched to driving the updated GT3 RSR for 2004 in the American Le Mans Series. But giant-killing successes with the 996 family didn’t stop there.
During a 2005 season in which everything Lieb touched turned to silverware, he paired up with Xavier Pompidou to win the Le Mans Endurance Series GT2 class in the older GT3 R model of 2000 vintage. They had missed the opening round at Spa, where Sebah’s unspectacular line-up in the RSR (complete with a sequential gearbox) was never a factor and a TVR claimed an unlikely win, so team boss Hugh Hayden entered the duo for Monza and was rewarded with victory. Lieb and Pompidou’s unbeaten record continued at Silverstone and the Nurburgring, securing them the crown without needing to attend the Istanbul Park finale.
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Armed with a factory GruppeM-run RSR in FIA GT, Lieb and Rockenfeller romped to the GT2 crown with six wins from 11 rounds and never saw the flag lower than second. But their best was saved for Le Mans.
The first of four wins for Lieb came with a superb against-the-odds display alongside Rockenfeller and 57-year-old gentleman driver Leo Hindery. Their Yokohama-shod Alex Job Racing 911 wasn’t given much of a hope in the GT2 class against the Petersen/White Lightning Racing example that featured an all-pro line-up of defending winners Patrick Long and Jorg Bergmeister together with Timo Bernhard.
“This was the favourite car,” remembers Lieb. “And on top of that, the team picked the Yokohama tyres, not the Michelins [that Petersen/White Lightning had], so we didn't have the right tyres developed for this car. At the test day we really struggled. Mike and I were looking at it and thinking 'this is going to be difficult'.”
But with some support from legendary Porsche engineer Roland Kussmaul and a totally different car philosophy – “we changed the set-up completely,” he says – it was a different story when the race came around. In the stifling heat, the Yokohamas worked a treat.
“The good thing was that it was really hot, because I think the tyre was just a bit of a harder compound and so we could actually drive a full stint and be quite consistent,” Lieb recalls.
A single stint early in the race and a 15-minute homecoming run was Hindery’s only contribution from behind the wheel, although Lieb recalls he wanted to drive more. The two young pros rotated through the car for most of the race and ultimately finished a lap ahead. “Their progress was simply inexorable,” noted Autosport.
“I think Leo did 50 minutes in the race and the rest was Mike and myself,” says Lieb. “We always saw each other at the pitstop; one was driving and the other one was sleeping! Leo wanted to drive more, but we said, 'hey, we have a chance to win this race'.
“It was brutally hot at the start and we were really exhausted. Each of us had 11.5 or something hours, it was just crazy.”
And that wasn’t the end of his success with 996s either. Lieb and Joel Camathias paired up to win the Le Mans Series GT2 crown in 2006 for Autorlando Sport before the 997 came on stream for 2007.
"At the test day we really struggled. Mike and I were looking at it and thinking 'this is going to be difficult'"
Marc Lieb
Lieb’s enduring passion for the 996 family is evident as he proudly shows Autosport a picture on his phone of the 2005 RSR, currently undergoing restoration at Proton Competition. He hopes it will emerge on a track somewhere this year to do some laps.
“It's just so cool when I look at it,” he says. “When I'm there and I look at the car and sit in – it's the old switches, the old steering wheel… It's a cool car, I really like it.”
