Of course Goodwood will celebrate the Porsche 917’s 50th birthday…

You didn’t think Goodwood was going to forget the Porsche 917’s 50th birthday now, did you? At this weekend’s 77th Members’ Meeting, five of the legendary prototype racers will stretch their legs on the historic circuit including the very first example built, chassis number one…

In what promises to be one of the most spectacular moments at this weekend’s Goodwood 77th Members’ Meeting, five Porsche 917s will parade around the circuit to celebrate the Le Mans-winning model’s 50th anniversary. Among them will be 917-001, the very first chassis, which was presented at the 1969 Geneva Motor Show and has just been restored by Porsche Classic to its exact original specification.

It will be driven by Richard Attwood, the man who gifted Porsche its first overall Le Mans victory in 1970 behind the wheel of a Salzburg-liveried 917K, and Mark Webber, who claimed the World Endurance Championship for Porsche in 2015 driving the 919 Hybrid. Chassis 001 will be followed by four other 917s, including the Gulf-liveried 917K that claimed victory in the 1970 Daytona 24 Hours, an ex-Siffert 917/10, and two monstrous 917/30s, one of which vanquished the opposition in the 1973 Can-Am Challenge Cup.

Elsewhere during the Members’ Meeting – which, in its revived form, has become a must-attend meeting in the past five years – there will be the usual roster of spectacularly diverse grids, in addition to high-speed demonstrations for a braying pack of BMW M1 Procars and 14 high-downforce modern LMP prototypes. Here’s hoping we don’t get any snow this year!