How Hans Mezger Shaped Porsche, From the 911 to Formula 1 Glory

On October 21, 1984, Niki Lauda finished second at Estoril and won the Formula 1 World Championship by half a point. The man he beat was his own McLaren teammate, Alain Prost, who had just won the race. It’s still the narrowest title margin in F1 history, and both cars were running the same engine: a compact 1.5-liter twin-turbo V6 with TAG on the cam covers and Porsche engineering everywhere else.

The man who designed that engine wasn’t in the podium photos, and he rarely was. Hans Mezger spent 37 years at Porsche, and in that time he had a hand in the original 911 flat-six, the 917, the turbo era and a family of engines that enthusiasts still call by his name. Funny enough, it all started with a job offer that never came.