Inside the shop door, about the second thing we encounter is the airplane engine-based on the 911 six-cylinder. This is deemed public knowledge, so we can mention it. There are engines, gearboxes, and odd parts everywhere, rather like a meatmarket specializing in aluminum castings. And, of course, cars-Porsches and others-nosed into service bays and up on hoists. Racing is never far below the surface at Weissach. Stacks of mounted tires are lined up at the wheel-balance department. About a third of them are fat Dunlops on corroded magnesium center-lockwheels. There is only one job for such hardware.

The racing department is next. It's well away from the main buildings, so close to the skidpad the commute would barely get the oil pressure up. The office building is wood painted dull red. In the corridor is a poster advertising a forthcoming tennis tournament; Martina Navratilova, in a Porsche T-shirt, is stretching for a ball. If you're worried about the Porsche factory racers being technocratic monks, forget it: she's sporting chin whiskers, and nippleshave been penciled onto her shirt. We continue down the corridor past the DinkelAcker vending machine (deposit DM 1. IO) and turn left, entering a room chaotic enough to be an editorial office except there are too many drilled brake rotors slid under desks and too many wind-tunnel models parked atop the file cabinets.

Peter Falk will talk to us. He's the head of Porsche racing, a grandfatherly man as thin as asparagus, and he obviously didn't take the job just for the double-wide broomcloset he was given for a private office. He tells us that about 60 percent of the race-car testing is done right here at Weissach. They'd do more here except that the track doesn't have enough straightaway for high speeds. The 956 runs out of room at 280kph (174 mph), well short of the 370 kph (230 mph) it reaches at Le Mans. When they need to really let a racer out, they go to Paul Ricard in France. The concentric skidpads, however, are very useful for both low- and high-speed testing, particularly the 210-meter (689 feet) outer circle, which allows enough speed for aerodynamic tuning. Newly designed racers are also tested over the torture roads, which is probably why Porsches have so few structural failures on the track.

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