STUTTGART and BERCHTESGADEN, Germany, Feb. 6 /PRNewswire/ -- With the
Winter Olympics around the corner, where do you turn for help in search of
more speed? Germany's luge legend Georg Hackl approached the chassis and
aerodynamics specialists of Porsche Engineering Group, the customer
engineering development company of sports car maker Porsche, to tweak his sled
in search of those all-decisive milliseconds. At the company's famous R & D
Center in Weissach near Stuttgart, the same engineers that helped develop the
engine of Harley-Davidson's revolutionary new V-Rod and provided the
innovative design package to the just recently introduced Advanced Vehicle
Concept of the American Steel Industry, managed to complete the task to
Hackl's satisfaction in less than two months.
    "A good start is extremely important in the luge, and unfortunately this
is exactly where my problem lies. Because of a back injury, I regularly lose
valuable time at the start and I've then got to make up this time during the
run", says the three-times World and Olympic champion from Bavaria. Quite a
challenge in a sport where next week the luge athletes (or sliders) will have
less than 48 seconds from start to finish in order to be competitive and after
four heats in two days the bat of an eyelid will decide over winning or
losing: the difference between the women's gold and silver singles medal at
the 1998 Nagano Olympics was two thousands of a second!
    The 35-year-old Hackl put his faith in Porsche Engineering to optimize his
sled. "The Porsche engineers got a grip of the problems of the luge straight
away. They began with a painstaking examination of all the dynamic processes
involved. In no time at all they had developed a number of possible solutions
that proved to be really effective when put into practice", concludes Hackl.
    As the final few days in the run-up to the Winter Olympics draw ever
nearer, Hackl is determined not to give away any details of the refinements
made to his sled by the Porsche engineers. Says Hackl: "The luge competition
is just like a game of poker. You don't lay your cards on the table right
until the very end. The important thing is to eliminate every single problem
that costs you time, no matter how insignificant it might seem. Working with
Porsche Engineering was very useful in this respect. I've always thought you
should treat the luge just like you would a thoroughbred sports car -- with a
bit of fine-tuning you can achieve perfect harmony between man and machine."
    Georg Hackl must certainly fancy his chances of a fourth consecutive gold
medal after his recent World Cup performance in Winterberg, Germany. In the
final race held on January 27, he roared through the light barrier as the
fastest finisher.Nevertheless, Hackl isn't taking anything for granted: "That
was just the rehearsal. The Olympics is an entirely different story. You can't
compare conditions in Winterberg with those in Salt Lake City." The handling
and steering of his new Porsche sled, which will make its debut at the Winter
Olympics on February 10 and 11, have therefore been set up by the Porsche
engineers to suit the conditions of the track in Park City. With hair raising
vertical drops of more than 300 feet through 17 gut-wrenching S curves and
hairpin turns, the 4,400-foot course at Bear Hollow is expected to produce
maximum speeds of 90 miles an hour.

    Porsche Engineering Group GmbH is Porsche's wholly owned customer
engineering development company. Porsche is the only car manufacturer that
makes its wide-ranging expertise in the development and production of vehicles
available to clients from a variety of industries. Headquartered in close
vicinity and with direct access to Porsche's renowned Weissach R & D center
near Stuttgart, Germany, Porsche Engineering directs and markets the worldwide
customer-development activities. Porsche Engineering Services Troy, Inc.,
based in Troy, MI, and Huntington Beach, CA, is the North American arm of
Porsche Engineering Group. Aside from facilities in Germany and the U.S., the
Company has branches in the Czech Republic and Japan.

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