In 2016 a newcomer to the team is German luminaire manufacturer TRILUX who aim to represent the most simple and reliable path to customised, energy-efficient and future-capable lighting solutions. Together we are looking forward to the season.” Some of the companies are involved in the demanding research, development and production of the cars, and in all cases it is a prestigious and fruitful relationship between those partners and the iconic sports car brand of Porsche. “With most of them we have been working since the programme kicked off. “We are very proud of our partners,” said Fritz Enzinger, Vice President LMP1. Also the World Championship winning team’s partners enjoy having their reputations enhanced by their names appearing on the innovative Le Mans Prototypes competing in the FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC). It is not only the car numbers of 1 and 2 on the Porsche 919 Hybrids that are rewards from last year’s successes.
“All I can say is that I’m glad I raced when I did,” said Haywood, 66, whose first victory in a Porsche 936 came in 1977 and his last in 1994 in a Porsche 962.FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC), LMP1 We intruded on Haywood’s Sunday morning breakfast for a short chat during the 82nd running of the French classic. “You should see it it looks like Mission Control,” said three-time Le Mans winner Hurley Haywood of Porsche’s operations center at Le Mans.
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But nowadays, top-tier Le Mans teams each resemble mini Apollo moon programs, with rooms full of engineers in the pits constantly monitoring every conceivable aspect of the vehicle and radioing instructions to the cockpit to maintain its health or make it go quicker (or slower), as conditions dictate. Sure, the pilots are the ones working the controls, hitting the apexes and the braking zones, and keeping the cars off the rails and away from each other. Except for a last-lap return for photos and television, the 919’s race was done.Īlso done are the days when leading Le Mans teams put all the responsibility for winning in the hands of the lone gladiator in his chariot. He immediately shut it down and motored back to the pits on the car’s front-axle electric motor. Coming out of one of the two Mulsanne chicanes, Webber “heard something” in the 919’s V-4 engine, which had been getting “tired” and “wasn’t running clean,” he said.
Then, not quite two hours later, Le Mans luck turned again. Could Porsche actually do it? Win Le Mans with a new team and new car after such a long absence? And against Toyota and Audi, both of which have amply paid their dues?
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Ex-Red Bull F1 driver Mark Webber put the spurs to the 919, as his lead over the next Audi was mere seconds.Īll over the circuit, Porsche bacchanals erupted in cheers and applause, and a crowd pegged by organizers at 263,300 began pressing the fences and buzzing with anticipation. Then the lead Audi R18 e-tron Quattro choked on a bad turbo in hour 21, rotating Porsche into a position to grab the rookie victory that the company had taken such great pains to assure fans that it wasn’t gunning for. First, Toyota’s race-leading TS040 hybrid retired with fritzing electrics in the 14th hour, bringing driver Kazuki Nakajima to tears and moving Audi into first. The white, fin-backed prototype advertising Japanese industrial toolmaker DMG Mori was tracking the leaders steadily from third place and waiting for Le Mans luck to strike.Īnd strike it did. A fleet of Porsche-stickered vans waited to whisk invited guests here and there, including out to a makeshift helicopter port were rides were given over the track.Īnd when a brilliant summer sun came up on Sunday morning after 13 hours of eventful racing, including a catastrophic pair of downpours early on that damaged cars from Toyota and Audi, both rivals for the lead, the Porsche 919 Hybrid was right there. It also came to party hard, having paid to erect multiple glass-lined, air-conditioned, and Champagne-stocked suites for VIPs around the circuit. Despite massive pre-race downplaying of its chances for victory, Porsche returned to Le Mans with its first factory-backed team since 1998 to run hard.
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