Endurance racing may be about survival, but it’s also about ruthless efficiency. In this context, an interrupted gear shift costs vital acceleration and allows boost pressure to fall, shedding valuable fractions of a second every time. Porsche engineers were aware of this and worked diligently to counter it using PDK transmission technology, where hydraulics and electronics handled the clutches, delivering the next ratio before the driver even asked for it. That’s standard technology within today’s dual-clutch transmissions, but in the early 1980s it certainly wasn’t. And while PDK would win a world championship race for Porsche, it wasn’t yet ready for bigger things.
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