Taken from Motor Sport, August 2023

Porsche had gatecrashed the Targa party a total of 10 times since 1956. The word on the streets of Cerda, Collesano and Campofelice, however, was that an 11th win was highly unlikely. For not only was Porsche’s ‘prototype’ sports-racer of 1973 nothing more than a souped-up GT car, but also the 57th running would likely be the final flowering of Sicily’s throwback road race.

“I think we knew that it would be the last one,” says Gijs van Lennep, the Dutchman slated to share the fastest of three works Carrera RSRs with Swiss Herbie Müller. “But that didn’t matter to us beforehand. We were just practising, practising, practising: a whole week; at least five or six laps a day. We never thought about winning because of those 12-cylinder Ferraris and Alfas, but we knew that we should finish because ours was a very reliable car.”