Hang around people who’ve been following motorsports for their entire adult lives and, depending on their age, you may hear them yearning for the days when auto racing was a purist exercise in wide-open technical experimentation. We mean the sort of brainstorming that birthed the STP turbines, multi-engine dragsters, the ground-effect brilliance of Jim Hall, and the transformation of world rallying that happened when Audi introduced the quattro system. People responsible for running and broadcasting motorsport at the highest level don’t like the prospect of inadvertent obsolescence, a risk that unchecked technology can create. That’s why most top-tier racing now incoporates strict limits on tires, engines, and body dimensions. One of the few components left that enjoy at least some measure adjustability and tuning that’s acceptable to sanctioning bodies are shock absorbers. That’s what makes this news significant.
Based in Markham, Ontario, in suburban Toronto, Multimatic has been selected to provide its DSSV dampers, as the rest of the world calls them, as the exclusive provider of spec shock absorbers to the new, 2021 edition of the Porsche 911 GT3 Cup racing cars, based on the 992 production platform. This is arguably the world’s best-known and most prestigious brand of competition for single-make race cars, comprising the Porsche Mobil 1 Supercup and numerous Carrera Cup series in individual nations. The DSSV system uses proprietary, precision spool valve technology for accurate, repeatable settings on the track. Shocks have as much to do with grip as tires, so this is hugely important. Multimatic already provides DSSV shocks that took the Ford GT to a Le Mans class win in 2016, and which control the ride of about 40 percent of the field in Formula 1, including Red Bull Racing, all of whose F1 wins have been Multimatic-equipped.
Jim Donnelly On Wheels 