Press Release "The Porsche 956 and 919 will lap the Nürburgring together"

[A.P.]

Mind blowing.

 

[sako97]

Never seen anything on 4 wheels corner like that before. Wow.

 

[Sunny]

I usually watch videos of cars lapping Nordschleife at 1.5x speeds cause they just take so long. This one looked exactly like that on normal.

And it didn't look like he was even pushing it, like no curbs nothing. Probably was told not to risk the one-off car either.

 

[TopspeedPT]

 

[Matski]

And it didn't look like he was even pushing it, like no curbs nothing.

He was leaning on the curbs in quite a few places, but most of the curbs at the Nordschleife aren't the kind that you abuse, they're steep so they upset the car and can lose you some underbody aero, and they can be suspension breakers too. The ones that are flat are most likely dirty and offer less traction than the track surface

Probably was told not to risk the one-off car either.

Understandable really, the Nordschleife is an FIA grade 3 circuit and one of the narrowest graded circuits... most of the barrier is just armco, and there's nothing to slow you down before you hit it. It's not that safe and the high average speed of the car means any small mistake or failure would could be catastrophic, there just isn't space to get it wrong.

Hell of a run either way. The way the car picks up speed through corner exit is astonishing.

 

[tristatez28lt1]

Sorry but...Fuchröhre at 330...do you have any idea what that means/must have felt like?? It’s absolute insanity.

 

[StartYourEngines]

The lap time is of course incredible but this car could have been much faster, up to 20-25 seconds quicker than this for sure.

Anyway, it is clear that the Porsche 919 Evo is one of the 3 fastest racing machines on the planet along with the Mercedes W09 and the Ferrari SF71H. In this context, the real question is: which one between the Evo and the two fastest F1s ever would come out on top on a specific circuit?

Let's say that we pick Suzuka: the 919 Evo, the W09 and the SF71H are allowed to be to the circuit with the official Porsche, Mercedes and Ferrari squads. The teams are given one day in order to set-up the cars for maximum performance.
Then, 3 fast laps for each driver/car (Bernhard, Hamilton and Vettel respectively) would allow to select the fastest of all.

It would be something fantastic to see.

 

[Matski]

this car could have been much faster, up to 20-25 seconds quicker than this for sure.

How?

 

[LaArtist]

So the real question we all need to know is when is shmee buying one ?

 

[Rolf]

F$ck I think I sh@t in my pants.

How does that guy manage such high cornering speeds and brake so quickly? His reflexes are unreal.

 

[TopspeedPT]

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[M.N.D]

All right, I have to say that I was kind of skeptical that Porsche was going to do this since they said that they were going to do a demo lap only for the Nurburgring 24, but they did it anyway... you were right @tristatez28lt1

Congratulations Porsche Such an amazing feat, and the video is enjoyable to watch. Porsche had a cracking year so far with the GT3 R of Manthey racing winning the Nurburgring 24 hours (one of my favourite races) and the 911 RSR winning the GTE category in 24 hours of Le Mans, and now this new record

 

[TopspeedPT]

GT2 RS vs 919 Hybrid Evo

 

[Tourbillon]

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[Revvd]

Hopefully this is a good place to make my post.
Like some of you before me, I too have been wondering about downforce figures of the Porsche 919 racer and the unrestricted Evo version.

Porsche never publicized any concrete figures, other than a relative increase for the 919 Evo (53% more than 2017 Spa quali setup), so I went searching through old threads hoping to find a clue. Without luck.
Then I tried calculating the downforce using the above picture from Sport Auto, detailing 919 Evo's Nordschleife lap with provided lateral G and cornering speeds. But the magazine must have messed up and mismatched lateral G with longitudinal during braking (or combined both), because not even the quickest Formula 1 car could do 3.5 G in a 143 kph corner. I don't know how else to explain the numbers. Even the values for the GT2 RS didn't make sense.

Onto the next one...
I think I got a sensible estimates using this 2017 Le Mans onboard with telemetry overlay. But there is always a risk of overestimating the downforce if you count with momentary spikes in lateral G forces.
Anyway, I had my baseline. Now it was time to use it to estimate the 919 Evo downforce.

Porsche said that 919 Evo generates 53% more downforce than their setup used for the 2017 Spa quali.
Now I should probably explain the differences between aero packages.
Unlike the previous season, in 2017 LMP1 were allowed only one aero package switch over the course of the season. Porsche started the calendar with the low downforce package at Silverstone and kept it for Spa and finally for Le Mans.
They switched to the high downforce package, sometimes called "Sprint", starting with Nürburgring, going all the way through Mexico, COTA, Fuji and Shanghai to the last round at Bahrain.
You can easily identify Sprint version with its slimmer, sloping front fenders, smaller headlights, aggressive canards, huge upswing on the rear deck as well as the high angle of attack of the rear wing.

But of course, figuring out the LDF version isn't as easy as adding 53% to the Le Mans estimate, since there were further differences between normal low downforce package and its Le Mans variant. That one was more like an ultra low downforce package.
For Spa, Porsche used a gurney flap on the rear wing and had a rear deck with pronounced upswing while the Le Mans version had a totally flat rear deck and flat front canards.
On top of that, I suspect the Le Mans car ran more balanced ride height front-and-back versus the pronounced rake on a regular LDF package.

LDF Le Mans

LDF

HDF "Sprint"

Evo

LDF Le Mans

LDF

HDF "Spring"

Evo

Given all these differences, I thought there is no way I'm ever gonna get to the bottom of this...
But then, while watching an onboard of the 919 Sprint version at Aragón circuit by Sport Auto, I decided to check if there's any accompanying articles about this track test.
There was one from EVO magazine, but without any downforce data and again mentioning, hardly believable, 4G cornering.
But then, I found these scans, put them through google translate and voila! They not only give us a direct quote for the Sprint version, but also say that the Le Mans setup generates 34% less.

Here's what the data looks converted to more digestible standard:

	Sport Auto claim:	roughly equates to:
2017 Porsche 919 HDF / Sprint	980 kg @ 200 kph	1,531 kg @ 250 kph
2017 Porsche 919 LDF Le Mans	647 kg @ 200 kph (34% less)	1,010 kg @ 250 kph

I can't believe this info has been public for 5 years and somehow nobody ever noticed it

Now, this still doesn't tell us about the normal LDF package, and by extension the 919 Evo, but at least we know where the two slot relative to these known baselines.

I found an official Porsche claim saying the Evo generates more downforce than 2017 Formula 1. So that could be a guideline to use, if we had that available. The closest such info seems to be the estimate for F1 2018 from an F1 Technical article of about 1,785 at 250 kph.

My rough guesses therefore would be as follow:
2017 Porsche 919 LDF: 1,212 kg @ 250 kph
2018 Porsche 919 Evo: 1,854 kg @ 250 kph

Both are about +20% over LM and Sprint respectively, which I think is reasonable. But please, tell me if you disagree and what those two should be making instead. I'd love to hear more opinions on this.

 

[tristatez28lt1]

@Revvd amazing work man

 

[Revvd]

Thank you, brother

 

[StartYourEngines]

Nice analysis, @Revvd!

But I would not really consider the 2018 F1 downforce quote that you provided as a totally relevant source.
It's not about you of course, since I've also been aware about those numbers and I think that they do represent a low-end outlier compared to all other info I have at my disposal about downforce levels of F1 cars from the 2017-2022 era.
In short:

- 2017 F1 cars saw a massive downforce increase compared to 2016 machines (likely 30% or even some more)
- 2018 F1 cars improved on 2017 performance
- 2019 F1 cars were very similar to 2018 ones
- 2020 F1 cars slightly improved again, and in terms of straight lap-time pace the fastest F1 car ever belongs to this year (Mercedes W11, which is in fact the F1 with most downforce ever)
- 2021 F1 cars saw a drop of around 10% of their total downforce compared to 2020 machines (flat floors were cut right before the rear wheels and total available floor surface area was reduced as a consequence)
- 2022 F1 cars saw a drastic rule change, with ground effect which was brought back in the series after decades. Downforce levels decreased compared to previous 2-3 seasons and, on average, we could say that they likely fell back to 2017 levels (or just slightly more than that).

Now that the performance relationship between 2017-to-2022 F1 cars is clear, I can tell you that I have quite certain downforce data for some top-end 2017 F1 cars and a totally certain info regarding the downforce of a back-end 2021 F1 car which simply tell that - to me - such quoted downforce for 2018 F1 cars cannot be that low, otherwise those cars would simply be much slower (in terms of lap times) compared to all other 2017, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022 F1 machines (fact which, clearly, did never happen in reality).

So, as a consequence of all of this, I believe that the downforce level of the 919 Evo should as well be quite a bit higher than what was reported. In fact, the car was not that far - in terms of performance in medium-high speed corners - from top-end 2018 F1 machines (which are among the fastest ever in terms of qualifying pace) such as Mercedes and Ferrari.
It was slower, yes (and making up the difference in the straights and in slow turns with AWD and independent brake-by-wire), but with a kerb weight of 888 kg (without driver), I think that 1854 kg of downforce at 250 km/h would have simply been not enough to provide a downforce-to-weight ratio which could still allow it to be that fast and that close in those high-speed corners.
Remember that, unlike any other 919, the 919 Evo was using motorsport-banned side skirts which were sealing the floor for ground effect, and because of this the car was capable to take on the Eau-Rouge at full speed with its DRS fully deployed (!).
That truly is a crazy feat that not even F1 cars could be capable to replicate and which means that the car was generating huge levels of downforce just by its under-floor alone.

 

[Revvd]

I think that they do represent a low-end outlier compared to all other info I have

Now the question is, could that value be representative of a 2018 low downforce setup, or is it off still?
I'm ok with that being the case, since the original comparison between F1 and 919 Evo was already vague enough.

the 919 Evo was using motorsport-banned side skirts which were sealing the floor for ground effect, and because of this the car was capable to take on the Eau-Rouge at full speed with its DRS fully deployed (!).

While they did use skirts, I'm not sure they were such a game changer, as they weren't flexible and I doubt the resulting seal was all that perfect. The Nordschleife setup afaik ran more ride height due to the bumpy surface, making them less effective and it was still bloody fast.
If they actually were hugely effective, Porsche would be opening a whole can of worms with porpoising issues, something they really didn't have a budget for.
I think the far more important factor of 919 Evo being fast was its less durable, softer compound tires.

Eau Rouge flat with DRS does sound very cool, until you realize the lowly LMDh/LMH cars (with around 1,200 kg downforce at 250kph) all do it flat with extra 190 kg of weight and running at least 30 kph slower.

I think that 1854 kg of downforce at 250 km/h would have simply been not enough to provide a downforce-to-weight ratio which could still allow it to be that fast and that close in those high-speed corners.

But how fast was it exactly in those corners? We don't have a telemetry.
The only Evo stat for Spa I've seen was Eau Rouge at over 300 kph. And I really don't think over 2 tons of downforce is necessary for a car like that.

I'm jealous of your F1 data. But since I have no other reference, I gotta work with these Porsche claims.
And best case scenario, I'd let 919 Evo have 2,000 kg at 250 kph, which maintains the incremental claim of +53% over LDF Spa quali setup (at about 1,307 kg).
The logic in the aero packages has to make sense and I have hard time seeing the 919 LDF being within less than 200 kg relative to the Sprint package.