PORSCHE 919 ‘EVO’ HYBRID SMASHES SPA AND NORDSCHLEIFE RECORDS

WHERE: GERMANY AND BELGIUM WHEN: APRIL 9/JUNE 29 After World Endurance Championship success and subsequent withdrawal from the series at the end of 2017, it was expected Porsche would consign its title-winning 919 Hybrid LMP1 car to a museum.

Instead, the German firm modified it and took the 919 ‘Evo’ on a spectacular ‘world tour’. It broke the unofficial lap record of the Spa-francorchamps circuit with Neel Jani at the wheel, beating Lewis Hamilton’s pole position time for the 2017 F1 race. Jani set a 1m41.770s, 12 seconds quicker than the car’s WEC pole lap in 2017. Despite Sebastian Vettel retaking the record back several months later, it still didn’t diminish Porsche’s feat.

Two months later, and with Timo Bernhard driving, the car unofficially smashed the late Stefan Bellof’s outright lap record for the NurburgringNordschleife. Bernhard knocked nearly a minute off Bellof’s 1983 Nurburgring 1000kms pole position time of 6m11.13s around the 12.94mile Nordschleife, setting a 5m19.546s. It also just missed out by one tenth of a second on the Brands Hatch Indy lap record of 38.032s set by the Benetton B197 of Scott Mansell back in 2004 during a EUROBOSS race. One of motorsport’s most remarkable machines was finally retired from public life in October.