While the Porsche took first place, the Modern race cars are far removed from the days of old. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site. But buckling up inside the tight confines of Porsche’s 2017 Le Mans winner is something special even by his high standards.Porsche and race-car driver Timo Bernhard just used the 919 Hybrid to decimate Stefan Bellof’s Nurburgring lap record by 51.58 seconds, at a total time of 5 minutes and 19.55 seconds with an average speed of 145.3 mph. “To come at this level and have the results they have this year — it’s really hard to produce these type of cars and this type of performance week in week out, it’s an incredible performance.”Third place went to the No. Far from it. The German brand won everything from the Dakar Rally to Le Mans. There is also a large LCD screen dead center to let them see several pieces of telemetric information at any time.The buttons range from simple functions like operating the headlamp flashers or the radio communications system, to more advanced features like adjusting brake bias. We may earn a commission through links on our site. 18 car driven by Neel Jani has set a new qualifying record for the current track configuration, smashing a record that stood for six years. Two months later, Porsche publicly announced the plans and stated that the car would debut in the 2014 season. Road & Track participates in various affiliate marketing programs, which means we may get paid commissions on editorially chosen products purchased through our links to retailer sites. Porsche isn't done. There was time where traction control consisted of your right foot, every car had three pedals, and computers didn’t even exist. 20 With only minutes left in the six-hour endurance race, a restart was forgone, leaving the remaining drivers to finish the race under caution. We have had consistently dry track conditions and went through our tire program as planned. With the 919 already a successful race car, This season, Porsche’s Team will field two 919 Hybrids. Updated 01/16/2015: Porsche announced that the 2015 Porsche 919 Hybrid began its extensive testing session at the Abu Dhabi Yas Marina Circuit. Modern, high-end racers are equipped with exponentially more computing power than man used to get to the moon. At first glance, the 2016 919 Hybrid is identical to last year’s model on the outside. The previous record stood at 3:18.513 minutes.The all-time Le Mans record, also set during qualifying, still stands at 3:13.90 minutes, as set by Pedro Rodriguez in a Porsche’s pole for this year’s race is the 17th for the company at Le Mans, but the first one in 18 years. In late 2011, Porsche employed Fritz Enzinger from fellow G… 18, will be driven by Marc Lieb, the man who drove the 918 to its record lap, Romain Dumas, and Neel Jani.Even though it didn’t manage to end the Audi tyranny at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the Porsche 919 Hybrid is still very much on a mission to bring the Stuttgart sports car builder back where it belongs in the LMP1 class in endurance racing. But Porsche’s dominance of top-tier endurance racing through the ’70s and ’80s (as well as a bit in the ’90s) gave way to the company concentrating its efforts on GT3 and GT2 racing, leaving outright wins to The question following this win was whether Porsche was making a serious return to LMP1 or if this was just to prove that Porsche still had what it takes to win, sort of like what Not to discredit all the success Audi has had at the 24 Hours of Le Mans over the last several years, but there’s a sense of rightness in the world since Porsche won for the first time in 17 years earlier this month.