To be honest crasherror, I think the 911 is the most succesfull flawed racing car in history. According to physics, it jus shouldn't be that good of a racer - all credit to porsche. But the fact is it IS physically flawed. If you took a engineer that say wasn't into racing, say he designed houses. If you told him to design a car, he would never put the engine where porsche have put their 911's.Just about every modern racer has a mid engined layout where possible - and thats for a reason.
Lakatu: in reply to your point about me being new, i am really interested in this kind of discussion and will contribute as much as possible. I'm hopefully going to start a motorsport engineering degree in september (which is basically a automotive engineering degree, which is basciacally a mechanical engineering degree but with greater emphasis on performance cars) so I will be able to contribute a lot more in detail as time goes by
Im not sure if this may interest you:
http://www.motorworld.net/forum/showthread.php?t=14171