These are the very first ‘official’ spy photos of Porsche’s new Le Mans prototype racer. The LMP1 vehicle will contend against rivals from Toyota as well as VW group stablemate Audi in the world Endurance series as well as the Le Mans 24-hour race next year.
Despite the truth that sibling brand Audi already dominates endurance racing with its diesel e-tron LMP1 car, the Audi as well as Porsche’s petrol-powered racer will fight each other for general race wins.
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Audi has wiped the floor with its rivals in recent Le Mans 24-hours events, winning 11 of the last 13 races. However, its 11 general wins at the French traditional still autumn behind Porsche’s 16 victories – making the Stuttgart brand the most successful make at Le Mans of all time. Porsche last won Le Mans in 1998 with a 911 GT1.
The roll-out of the new Porsche LMP1 vehicle was carried out at the test track at Porsche’s R&D centre in Weissach, Germany. The vehicle was driven by Porsche factory driver, Timo Bernhard, as well as the entire Porsche board of administration was in attendance for the event.
Porsche has been working on its return to endurance racing because mid-2011, with the very first LMP1 prototype chassis – a totally clean-sheet style from the ground up – taking to the track a couple of weeks earlier than planned.
“We are well on schedule,” stated Fritz Enzinger, Head of the LMP1 programme. “Our newly-formed team has dealt with utmost concentration on getting this extremely complex car on the track as soon as possible.
This enables us a few extra weeks for much more testing as well as even more development. From 2014, the policies are mainly based on efficiency. This makes the competition amongst engineers much more fascinating as well as provides us with totally new challenges.”
Porsche has broadened its motorsport centre at Weissach to cope with the demands of its upcoming race programme. The firm has developed as well as new workshop as well as admin building to home its 200-strong race team.
Porsche has verified that the testing of the new vehicle will be carried out by Berhard as well as fellow factory chauffeur Romain Dumas on tracks around the world.
“During the advancement of our new LMP1 race car, we dealt with the exact same difficulty as in the series production advancement of our road cars,” stated Wolfgang Hatz, Board member for research study as well as Development, Porsche AG. “Our objective was to accomplish the very best possible effectiveness without compromising performance.”