Porsche is inextricably linked to Le Mans having won the famous 24-hour endurance race a record 16 times. The first win came in 1970 with the legendary 917, and the last in 1998 with the 911 GT1.

This past July, the Stuttgart-based sports car manufacturer announced that it will return to the La Sarthe circuit in 2014 with an official entry. Not that it has ever actually left, as numerous privately owned 911s participated each year and even the factory team won the LMP2 class in 2008 and 2009 with the RS Spyder.

Four-time Le Mans winner Derek Bell is absolutely right when he says, while sitting on the 953 that dominated Le Mans during the 1980s, that “they had to come back with something like this – people talk about the outright winners, they don’t talk about class winners.”

You can watch the six and a half-minute long videos that flash through Porsche’s history at Le Mans from the 1970s until today right after the break.

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