Last Friday, something truly amazing was underway at the Nurburgring Nordschleife as the early German morning was peppered with the shrapnel from a completely vaporised lap record, courtesy of the Porsche 919 Hybrid Evo with Timo Bernhard behind the wheel and their stagger-inducing time of 5 minutes 19.55 seconds.
Porsche clearly had felling Stefan Bellof’s overall Nurburgring lap record squarely in their sights when they embarked on the ‘Tribute’ tour earlier this year, which along the way also smashed the lap benchmark at Spa Francorchamps on April 9th. It’s no huge surprise either, given that the Evo moniker means that Zuffenhausen has taken out pretty much every limiting component from their Le Mans-winning car and them having tuned to well beyond WEC regulation spec.
Bellof himself would no doubt have approved, he who passed away tragically in 1985 at the Belgian track - his record-breaking run around the Nurburgring two years prior in the beastly Rothmans Porsche 956 C during practice for the 1000km sports car race cementing his name in the history books.
While the previous record of 6 minutes 11.13 seconds was absolutely astonishing for the 35 years it remained unbeaten, the 919 Hybrid Evo seemed to easily make minced-meat of the Green Hell, setting a lap time that is 51.58 seconds quicker around the 22km circuit.
The new record holder, Timo Bernhard, must be finding it hard to walk on solid ground again after being on such a high on June 29th. The 37-year old Porsche works driver, two-time Le Mans 24-Hours winner, and current reigning World Endurance Champion said after he clambered out of the 919 Hybrid, having just smashed the previous record:
“This is a great moment for me and for the entire team – the 919 programme’s icing on the cake. The Evo was perfectly prepared and I have done my best on this lap. Thanks to the aerodynamic downforce, at sections I never imagined you can stay on full throttle. I’m pretty familiar with the Nordschleife. But today I got to learn it in a new way.”
He and the team have a lot to be proud of, but a good chunk of the credit needs to be lavished on the amazing car that made it all possible. The 919 Hybrid, in case you aren’t familiar, is a less of a car than a racing instrument - designed and built to conquer the arduous sport of endurance racing in the LMP1 class.
As such, its construction omits any modicum of the unnecessary, shedding anything and everything it can to tip the scales at just 849kg. In derestricted Evo spec, though, its extensive aerodynamic package is allowed to generate twice as much downforce than regulation would allow, and its modifications mean that it generates 66 percent less drag.
Power the 919 Hybrid Evo is, as the name alludes, a combination of combustion and electric power. Its main powerplant is a compact 2.0-litre turbocharged V4 unit that’s been breathed on to produce 537kW on race fuel (or roughly 164kW more than in WEC-spec). Meanwhile, output from its electric motors have also increased from 400hp to 440hp (or 328kW).
So: a hybrid powertrain with over 750kW of total system thrust, allied to a ultra-lightweight body that weighs about the same as a Lotus Elise and fitted with about as much active aero black magic that Porsche engineers can conceive of - the Nurburgring lap record never stood a chance.
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