Retro: Primus Motorsports' wild fling at Sebring

Primus Motorsports came and went from the IMSA GTP scene in 91 days. In, out, and quickly forgotten.

Its brief stint racing Porsche 962s in 1987 lasted from its debut at the 24 Hours of Daytona on Feb. 1 to the Laguna Seca round on May 3, and in between the tiny team – a goldfish among sharks – pulled off a minor miracle by placing third at the 12 Hours of Sebring.

Bayside Racing's Bobby Rahal and Jochen Mass scored a memorable victory as Bruce Leven – the beloved garbage disposal magnate-turned-team owner/driver – watched his 962 beat Al Holbert's factory Porsche program to the finish line. In most circumstances, the scrap among Porsche 962 titans would make for the obvious angle to follow on the 30th anniversary of the event.

That is, at least, until we consider Primus Motorsports' achievement. Led by Porsche guru Kevin Jeannette (whose son Gunnar races in IMSA today) and run on the smallest of budgets, the fly-by-night team authored an unholy Sebring upset as defending winners Bob Akin Racing, Joest Racing, Dyson Racing, Busby Racing and AJ Foyt Racing were humbled by the upstarts.

And given the odd driver rotation – a maestro in Brian Redman, the seasoned Elliott Forbes-Robinson and a comically tall rookie prototype driver in Chris Kneifel, their eventual arrival at the podium was a result that defied prediction.

[Click on the thumbnails below for larger images of the Primus Racing Porsche at Sebring.]

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Coming out of Indy cars and SCCA Trans Am racing, Kneifel says he loved the crazy times and characters that made Primus a miniature powerhouse...for three months.

"That was really one of the greatest experiences for me...but it was an abbreviated year," the Chicago native recalled. "Brian Redman and I were co-drivers for the normal races and EFR came in for the endurance races, and Kevin Jeannette was really the guy behind the team. And Doug Fehan – the [current] Corvette Racing program manager – he was in charge of Mac Tools sponsorship back then, and he was a part of the team on the sponsor side.

"Kevin and Brian (right) were very good friends, and the guys that worked on the team, it was John Baytos, Buddy Lindblom and there were some other really good guys that went on to do really good things in their professional careers. It was the ultimate privateer team; just guys that were doing it for the love of the game."

The team's first race at Daytona hinted at the potential contained within Primus, but the Porsche' turbocharged engine wasn't ready to spoil them with longevity.

"We went to Daytona, caught on fire and blew up, but we were in third when it happened," Kneifel said. "Brian was driving the car and I was getting ready to get in myself, it was around two o'clock in the morning and he came by and is on a straightaway and the thing was on fire and I'm like, 'Oops, that's no good...'"

By Sebring, the third race of the year, Jeannette's anonymous squad was starting to shine.

"We rebounded, we had a couple decent showings and ended up really qualifying well for a few of the races," Kneifel added. "Our best showing in that thing was when Brian, myself, and EFR drove at Sebring. We came in third which was real solid. And that was giving us a lot of hope going forward."

[Listen to Kevin Jeannette's expanded memories from Sebring 1987 in the podcast at the bottom of the page.]

Unbeknownst to the team, an end to its funding, which came through a business handled by Kneifel's stepfather, would bring a rapid conclusion to the "going forward" portion of the story. But not before Chris made an indelible mark on his co-driver.

"And at Laguna Seca I qualified the car, was up to P2 when I pitted, and then had one of the most embarrassing moments in my entire career I suppose at the end of the day I'd probably regret but I don't because it's actually a funny story," Kneifel said.

"Qualifying at Laguna, and that was, of course, back in mid '87 on the old track; it wasn't any of this Mickey Mouse infield bullsh*t. Turn 2, 3, 4 were left, left, left. You needed big balls to get through there. In those days if you really had it right you could do all that whole sequence, you can get them flat. It was like being on the end of a rope. I came through there and I nailed them all, I was flat through Two and I was going, 'Holy sh*t, this is amazing!

"I got to Turn Five – which is at the top of the hill, the left-hander that's right at the edge of the cliff there, just past the bridge. I nailed that one, so I'm heading up to the Corkscrew and, literally, all I had to do was not f*ck up and I knew, I had literally the demon lap. I just got a touch greedy and locked the left front up and just dragged that tire a little bit and got 18 inches, maybe two feet past the apex of the left hand at the top of the Corkscrew.

"Of course, at that point what I had to do was just pause on the throttle because I couldn't get on the gas for the right-hander, because I was a bit off-line, so I had to just wait for the nose to come back and kick it back up. Came back down, finished the lap and everything was basically fine. It was a smoking hot lap, good enough for P2 which, for us, is really incredible. But the exception was I knew that I had made a slight mistake. If I'd just been conservative rather than slightly aggressive at that one point in time we would've been on pole."

The Primus 962 would fall down to fifth by the end of the session as other cars put in final flying laps, but that didn't concern Kneifel. At something in the 6-foot-6 range, the lanky, enraged driver could only think about bursting from the Porsche and venting his frustration. Poor Brian Redman.

"I come into the pits and, of course, the 962's had the gullwing doors that flipped up and forward," he said. "I finished the lap, came around, pitted the car, came up to the pit box and everyone is standing there literally clapping, and you could just see the thrill, everyone is thrilled, everyone is so happy. I pull into the pit box and I was pissed off. They thought I just f*cking threw a killer lap and I was sitting there mad at myself because I knew that I kind of made a mistake.

"And I pulled the door release – which is just a wire cable – I pulled the door release and I mean, I flung the door up with superhuman strength. Well, little did I know, I wasn't looking, Brian had come around to the right side of the car and he was just thrilled. And I literally caught him on the chin with the door. He was leaning down to like congratulate me and I was flinging the door up as hard as I could and the door and dropped him on pit lane. So there's Brian Redman laying on pit lane with his chin basically split open from me smashing him in the face with the door. I felt it when I hit him, I turned, I looked and I saw and I'm going, 'Oh my God!'"

Kneifel felt three-feet tall afterward.

"I just needed to crawl into some little hole and die because I smashed Brian Redman," he continued. "He was like a hero to me, and I just took a thrilling thing and turned it into a piece of sh*t. I had a hard time explaining that one. I was a bit apologetic to Brian after having cold cocked him with the door of the 962..."

Thanks to Kneifel's elongated frame and the cramped (for him) Porsche cockpit, finding leverage to blast Redman in the face with the door wasn't particularly hard.

"You might recall the 962 that I drove, we ended up putting a bubble in the roof because I couldn't fit my head in there," he said. "The cars came with a factory seat that had a fore and aft slider adjustment... The seat fit Brian absolutely perfect. He sat in that thing, and it was like it was made for him. And to be honest, I sat in the seat and it was a perfect seat for me as well with the exception being I didn't have anywhere to put my head. I had to turn my head almost sideways because of my height. But in terms of how it fit around my hips and up through my ribs and around my shoulders it was actually pretty good.

"But I was running a little bit out of room on the top. What I wanted to do was take the seat out and do a pour-foam seat and then run an insert for Brian, but he vetoed that. And after that at that point the only option was to put a bubble in the thing like the old [Dan] Gurney bubble in the Shelby Daytona Coupe. It was Kevin's idea. He got a kick out of making this retro bubble for me, and the next thing you know, we got a damn bubble in the damn 962 roof and my head's sitting up there. At that point literally the top of the roll cage was probably maybe half an inch, three quarters of an inch above my ear.

"So there is a good part of my head, not to mention the top of the helmet, that was above the roll bar. But that was the only way that we could do it using the factory seat. So that's what we did. Always with my size, particularly with co-drivers, there was always compromise. Even in the IndyCars there was compromise. There were times I just, if I was 5-foot-9 I would've fit better but I didn't and it is what it is. So we put the bubble in the top of that car and let her rip. Obviously, the IMSA officials weren't too worried about that. I'm not sure you could get away with that these days."

Praising Redman for all he gave during those three months and five races with Primus was a joy for Kneifel (pictured with Redman).

"He was a complete encyclopedia of information," he said. "Anything I ever wanted to know or ask or anything was there. More importantly than that, the guy was a teacher of life and how to hold yourself and how to behave. He was the perfect example of how to be a good person. Very funny guy, totally serious, total team player. He was across the board really one of the best. The only regret is I wish I would have been able to spend more time with him because he was spectacular. And the guy could drive a racecar, there was no question about that. He knew everything."

Beyond all the good memories, Kneifel has held onto one piece of the Primus Motorsports Porsche 962 as a keepsake.

"The one thing that I have from the 962 is the boost knob from that car," he admitted. "That's sitting on a shelf and I always thought the boost knob was just so cool. You could reach over from the seat and twist it and make more power. Porsche was always pretty conservative in terms of the amount of boost that they wanted to run. It was usually around anywhere, in a long race, would be around 1.5 bar (21.7 psi), in the shorter races, you'd qualify it at 1.75 (25.3psi).

"And I was always pretty good with it...being honest about it. You could've taken the thing and turned it up to 1.8 and nobody would've known the difference because it's not like they could download a computer and see what you were running. At that point it was all manual control. But it was tempting. Those were really good times with that team. Everyone gave their hearts to the thing, and we made some waves for a short while. There was a bunch of fun to be had but it ended too soon."