In France this weekend, the World Endurance Championship is hosting the Official Test Day for the 24 Hours of Le Mans. As much of the 8.4-mile Le Mans circuit is made up of public roads, this is the one and only chance for teams to test on the track itself before race week. Endurance racing fans have much to look forward to this weekend, but the top LMP1-Hybrid class cars offer some of the most jaw-dropping performance in the world. The entries from Audi, Toyota, and Porsche all are capable of putting down well north of 1,000 total horsepower combined from internal combustion engines and hybrid systems and the speeds have been mind-boggling the last couple years.
Case in point: Last year, Neel Jani in Porsche’s 919 Hybrid set the pole time of 3:16.887 for an average speed of 245 km/h, which is far and away the quickest lap in the track’s current configuration and almost the fastest for any configuration. That is remarkable when you consider that the track for most of its history had an unbroken four-mile straightaway.
Anyway, in anticipation of the Test Day this year, Porsche PR finally released onboard footage of the 2015 pole lap. The car is an absolute rocket, especially when deploying the electric motors, which shriek both when recovering energy under braking and when switched on to give a huge acceleration boost. The turbocharged V4—yes, it’s an actual V engine to lower the center of gravity—makes a surprisingly grunty note to accompany the hybrid system. If it sounds like a spaceship, that’s because this breed of LMP1 cars are pretty dang close to spaceships in terms of complexity.
While I’m rambling, it’s also noteworthy to see the time of day at which this lap was made. That post-sunset gloaming is known at Le Mans as “happy hour” because the track still has enough daytime heat in it to provide good grip while the cooling air gives engines a few extra horsepower. The end result is that laptimes seem to find their bottom right around that time of both qualifying and the race.
As an aside, the official lap record is set under race conditions and last year, Andre Lotterer in the #7 Audi R18 set that mark with a 3:17.475. That was the fastest ever race lap at Le Mans in any track configuration. Test Day might clue us in on whether that record might be in jeopardy.
