Porsche is ready to defend their title in the FIA World Endurance Championship.
They presented their new Porsche 919 Hybrid LMP1 car that will battle against Audi and Toyota for the World Title and the very important Le Mans race itself.
Porsche explain in their press release that they have made a lot of evolution around the power train.
From the outside the car looks very similar to the 2015 winning car, and personally I’m a little disappointed compared to the Audi launch yesterday.
The numbers from Porsche are either very conservative or really far behind Audi regarding horsepower. The gasoline powered engine will deliver less than 500 bhp and the hybrid part deliver above 400bhp. Audi mentioned more than 1000 bhp combined in theirs.
Porsche explain that they expect the lap times to increase by about 4 seconds around Le Mans. That is due to the limitations to the fuel flow rate this year, and the limitations of max 400 kW per lap from the hybrid system.
But the championship winning car was of course as close to perfection as possible, since it took 8 out of 8 Pole Positions plus they won every single race from and including Le Mans and onward.
The driver line ups will once again be World Champions Timo Bernhard, Brendon Hartley and Mark Webber in car number 1, while Neel Jani, Romain Dumas and Marc Lieb will pilot car number 2.
