Part 2 Images by Sebring Int'l Raceway

By: Marshall Pruett March 14, 2019 9:22 AM In a trance-like state due to sleep deprivation, our hero would get to know the 935, and Sebring, and where its dozen-plus corners went…during his first stint in the race.“[I was] destroyed because we hadn’t slept for like, four days,” he says as his eyes grew wide. “I mean literally, I was sleeping on airport benches and stuff, you know. And… I’d never seen the track, I’d never seen the car, no idea where…you know, of anything. We arrived at the track, I’m not even sure we signed in. Given de Narváez qualified the car like in… I don’t know, 50th place or something because there was like 80 cars or something starting the race then.“So he starts to race, and kinda just stayed in more or less the same [position], and then Hans jumps in. And he gets up to speed pretty quick, you know. So he starts picking up some places and then it’s my turn. I said I’d never driven the car, I had no idea of the track — I did see the [circuit went] left after the pits…”Once inside the brutally powerful turbocharged flat-six-powered Porsche, Johansson was stunned to find the transmission was not suited for road course racing. The 935, however, would have been perfectly suited on the high banks of Talladega.“And Sebring back then was like a huge airfield. To just get your bearings right, where to turn even, was difficult,” he adds. “And then this car had this locked rear differential. So if you lift completely, like if you’re turning right and you’re going a pretty hefty speed as you did that and you lift off completely, the thing would just turn left because the diff would just steer it…“I knew nothing about it. I mean literally, it was like half an hour to get our s••t together, helmets and everything, and then just, all right, you’re on! So, I was being passed by anything you could see out there. Ah, bloody hell.”Considering all of the obstacles he faced, and the extremely long odds of hauling the old and cranky 935 from the back of the field into a competitive position, simply making it to Sebring and taking the green flag was a victory for the No. 48 Porsche team. But in typical Johansson fashion, that couldn’t be the end of the story.How did de Narváez, Heyer, and the irrepressible Swede fare at the 1984 12 Hours of Sebring? They won!