Forza Motorsport 7: The car that killed Can-Am racing

As the celebration for Porsche's 70th anniversary comes full circle, the November Spotlight Car of Forza Motorsport 7 showcases how one car killed a motorsport series due to its dominance. I'm talking about the legendary 917/30.



Before taking a drive, let's talk more about this machine. You see, Porsche and Penske are well-known motorsport titans in history and the 917/30 is one of them. Because of its turbocharged 5.4L V12 engine that produces over a thousand horsepower, the 917/30 is the car that put an end to Can-Am racing series forever.

The respected Mark Donohue, who was Roger Penske's trump card in the Can-Am series, piloted the #6 Penske Sunoco 917/30 and won 6 races in a row in the 1973 season, their first and last season it competed in. In fact, it's so dominant, it killed Can-Am for good.

Aside from that, Donohue took it to the Talladega SuperSpeedway and clocked an average of 221.03 mph, eclipsing AJ Foyt's closed circuit world record of 217mph, before Donohue's untimely death. Needless to say, the 917/30 remains an unrivaled legend in motorsport history due to its outrageous performance that gave a final nail to the coffin of the motorsport it competed in.



Of course, digging deeper to the 917/30's outlandish tale is just the half of it because there is one major reason why the 917/30 killed Can-Am racing and that's because it was too fast for the opposition to handle. Several decades on, this motorsport legend is still too fast for anyone to handle such brute force, including me. Getting your foot down, you'll notice how intimidating this car is and trying to handle this machine on the first try is like getting wrestled by a brown bear in the wilderness. That feels downright scary but this is the kind of experience you'll get from a legendary racing machine that killed Can-Am racing.

To demonstrate what's what, the producers invited players to try out this month's spotlight car round Lime Rock Park just to get the feeling of what this destoryer of Can-Am racing does. Roll the tape.



Of course, this can can get round Lime Rock in less than a minute but there are some other drivers that can do faster than the average lap time and only a few understand the biggest potential underneath its intimidating performance raw enough to spell doom on the racing series it competed in in the past.



The Porsche 917/30 maybe the car that killed Can-Am racing but in the process of celebrating 70 years of Porsche, this outlandish motorsport icon really is part of Porsche's motorsport hall of fame and that really is something the next generation of drivers are learning from.