Singer is no dreamer. If you ask whether ideas come to his mind during quiet hours by the fire, he answers with a hearty laugh: "That's really not how it works." Ideas are born from the handwork, in practical work with your hands on the object, day after day.
And because man can make errors, Singer says, "The most important thing is to recognize and admit your own errors and weaknesses." He finds his principally
in the fact that he is too impatient with the efforts of engaged but inexperienced colleagues. He simply realizes that some thing suggested elaborately by somebody else won't work because he has already tried it himself. He prefers to depend on longtime associates who, "know precisely what I mean when I suggest something." He admits, "I am one of those people who would rather do it all himself." This might save time on occasion but it can be a problem at times. Singer: "This supposedly comes from the days when I struggled in the research department as an outsider and appendage. We had times like that too."
Ever since the Porsche Board decided on a factory effort at Le Mans in '96, Norbert Singer and his colleagues have stricken "time off" from their vocabularies. The fact that he met his wife at Porsche, so that she knew what she got into marrying him, eases his conscience towards her, their son and daughter, but only partly. "The family," Singer says, "naturally suffers for this."
The chance has now come to divert his attention for a few minutes from concentration on Le Mans and to detour with him into his lifestyle, hobbies and passions outside the pulsing racing circus. He mentions his pleasure in photography or occasional considerations of what he would still like to learn in his life - and his youth when he discovered a love of classical music, and Beethoven in particular, by chance. He heard the Fifth Symphony on the tape of a fellow boarding-school student, first thought it terrible like his pals, but then discovered each time the piece was played again that it pleased him and the others more and more. He began to become curious about the life and environment of those composers so highly regarded today. And he discovered that "they have created such fantastic pieces almost exclusively under time pressure and scarcely believable conditions. As curious as it might seem - there are parallels to my own field there." They had to know their business - and created something special out of that.
There is an impatient knock on the door. Coworkers have questions and want
to get on with it. Le Mans doesn't give you time to breathe. Norbert Singer
looks at his watch again. "Excuse me, I must ..."