The resources that didn't go into Falk's office were put into the race shop itself. Huge overhead doors open three Rothmans-liveried 956s stripped of their skeletons for rebuild in prep for their next appearance, at Kyalami. There is a quiet confidence in the air, and little attention is paid to us. Tbis building is surely Porsche racing's center of gravity. A ten-long row of sun-faded victory wreaths hangs on the wall over a flank of workbenches. Through a doorway is the white-walled engine room. It's brightly illuminated, with rows of green-topped benches separating the 956 rebuilding area from the TAG Formula I engine area from several other areas that we can't identify. Never having seen any of these engines apart before, we're poorly prepared to spot secrets. Falk probably factored that in when he okayed the tour.

We've been waiting for the skidpad to dry up so we can get on with photographing the Group b prototype, which has been temporarily delayed from its wind-tunnel appointment just for our purposes. But it's a gray, cold day-back in Zuffenhausen, Weissach is called "Siberia," not for its remoteness, but because the temperature is typically five degrees Celsius colder here - and the puddles in the wavy asphalt simply won't go away. Our ever resourceful photographer proposes making them bigger and using them as reflecting pools. So we need more water. Off to the side of the skidpad is a low wooden shed with grounds-maintenance equipment parked around it. Surely there will be water there. On the way over, Manfred Jantke, chief of the press office, mentions that just this side of the building is the spot where all the stationary testing of the aero engine was done. A propeller was attached, and it just roared away right there in the open air. But as we draw near, he's surprised to find the location is bare. Not even an oil spot. That, Jantke says, is typical of the improvisational nature of Weissach. The engineers just lash up a rig that will get them the answers. When the job is done, there are no monuments. It's the same temporary theme so evident in Falk's barracks office.

As we near the shed, a woman in her late twenties steps out. She's wearing a red Porsche jacket. Jantke asks in German about the water. I poke my head into the doorway, expecting to see shovels and bags of concrete. Surprise. It's a makeshift laboratory. There are banks of chart recorders in the foreground sprouting electrical cables trailing back to what look like highly instrumented dynos. A motorcycle engine is mounted onto one, and a 928 aluminum V-8 onto the other. On closer inspection, the V-8 is actually a test fixture, its valley cut away to reveal combustion chambers with four valves, twice what you'd find in the production version. The water, we are told, is outside.
 

Our Guided tour includes a few laps around the "Can-Am" circuit, where Mark Donohue's 917/30 practiced its moves a dozen years ago before stepping into the open and devastating the opposition in the old Can-Am. It's 1.6 miles around with six turns, including a steeply banked curve at the south end and a flatter U-bend at the north, which is separated from the main engineering compound by only a few rows of catch fencing and a weedy dirt bank. Miss this one, which comes right after the high-speed straight, and you'll end up in the emissions-durability test section, probably dead. Once we get going, it's obvious why racing drivers dislike testing here: there's zero runoff room. At Alter Hof, which is technically not part of the Can-Am circuit, and at Pfad corner and Bott chicane, the track runs right along the edge of the property. The catch fencing starts where the pavement stops. And the pavement is narrow to begin with. As we exit full-throttle out of Pfad, our driver inclines his head toward a spot in the fence and says that a 956 glanced off there a few weeks ago and comprehensively crunched itself against a rail on the inside of the track. What about the pilot? Oh, he's that guy we saw around the race office with the cast on his wrist. The wheel spun around and wrenched his thumb.

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