In 1994, the Le Mans organizers introduced a new set of rules designed to lessen the prototypes' advantage in favor of production-based GT cars. Porsche's answer: homologating several 962s to street-legal specification and selling them to the public. The result: a privately entered Porsche 962 "road car" piloted by Hurley Haywood, Mauro Baldi and Yannic Dalmas streaked to another outright victory.

The following year, the first year Le Mans' new rules took full effect, saw the rise of another new challenge: series-produced supercars exploiting the new equivalency formula. With virtually every one of the prototype challengers experiencing trouble in the rain-soaked race, a McLaren F1 captured a surprise win, the first production-based car to capture Le Mans since the Porsche 935 in  1979.

Porsche responded in 1996 with the first full factory effort at Le Mans in nearly a decade. The effort began a mere 60 days after the McLaren's win, when the basic outline of Porsche's new 911 GT1 had been established.

The only car to finish ahead of the two Porsche factory 911 GT1 entries: a TWR prototype chassis developed and powered, incidentally, by Porsche.

And this June, the Porsche GT1s will be where Porsche race cars have been every June for more than four decades: Le Mans. Please join us as www.porsche.com follows the race live.