Porsche 919 Hybrid extends lead in FIA World Endurance Championship

  • May 13, 2016
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The driving trio of Romain Dumas, Neel Jani and Marc Lieb finished second at the second round of the WEC championship, extending their lead even further.

Porsche 919 Hybrid

Porsche has extended its lead in the second round of the FIA World Endurance Championship at Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium, thanks to some spirited driving from the trio of Romain Dumas, Neel Jani and Marc Lieb.  Despite a problem with the hybrid system, the trio finished second with their Porsche 919 Hybrid, while the sister car of Timo Bernhard, Brendon Hartley and Mark Webber spent more than one-and-a-half hours of the six-hour race in the garage for repairs after two punctures. The second racecar came 5th in the LMP1 category for hybrid cars in the end.

With this, Porsche now leads the manufacturers’ standings with 54 points ahead of Toyota (45) and Audi (41).

Porsche 919 Hybrid

If you’re unfamiliar with the WEC, it is the first endurance series of world championship status since the demise of the World Sportscar Championship at the end of 1992. The World Endurance Championship name was previously used by the FIA from 1981 to 1985. The series feature multiple classes of cars competing in endurance races, with sports prototypes competing in the Le Mans Prototype categories, and production-based grand tourers competing in the LM GTE categories.

The fastest lap of the race, achieved by Brendon Hartley (1:58.431 minutes), gives an idea of what would have been possible for the Porsche 919 in Spa. Following the season’s opening race at Silverstone this is the second fastest race lap for Porsche’s Le Mans prototype in 2016. Track temperatures of up to 50 degrees Celsius gave much warmer conditions than expected for the race in the Ardennes mountains.

Porsche 919 Hybrid

Speaking after the race, Fritz Enzinger, Vice President LMP1, said: “The opening round at Silverstone wasn’t easy but here in Spa it was even more difficult, although we were starting from the front row with both cars. Having achieved a second place finish despite the technical problems early in the race on the number 2 car proves again: giving up is never an option in endurance racing.”

The Porsche 919 Hybrid is first sports prototype built by Porsche since the RS Spyder, and the first sports prototype built by Porsche to compete in a top category of sportscar racing since the Porsche 911 GT1-98 and Porsche LMP1-98. It is also the first sports-prototype to be raced by Porsche as a racing team since the Porsche 911 GT1-98 and Porsche LMP1-98. It utilises a 2-litre four-cylinder turbocharged engine with a battery-based hybrid system. The 919 Hybrid made its competitive debut at the 2014 6 Hours of Silverstone in Great Britain in the opening round.

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