Porsche Smashes the Nurburgring Record:

Most motor racing lap records are broken regularly but only by a small amount, often fractions of a second. But Porsche has just lowered a circuit record by nearly a minute or 14%. We are talking about the Nurburgring and to be fair the old record of 6 minutes 11.13 seconds was set in 1983, by Stefan Belloff and things have developed a lot since then. Actually Nürburgring is the generic name for a motor sport complex in Nurburg, in Germany which has among other things a modern 5.1 km grand prix track and a much longer north loop Nord -Schli Fn – which is a 20.8 kilometre circuit through the spectacular heart of the Eifel region. Formula one legend Jackie Stewart defined it as “The Green Hell” and it is the longest, most beautiful and without much argument the most challenging motor racing circuit in the world. It opened in 1927 and has a wealth of motoring history. One lovely story is that there in 1934 Mercedes were struggling to comply with a new weight limit of 750kg so they scraped the paint off their cars which then became known as the silver arrows because of their bare metal appearance. Nurburgring has huge race meetings but at certain regular times you can drive around it as a tourist. To tackle the record Porsche started with their 919 Hybird sports-prototype car which won the 2015 Le Mans 24 hour race and the World Endurance Championship three times from 2015-2017. The amazing thing is that these super-fast racing cars only use a 2 litre V4 turbo charged engine coupled with a battery-based hybrid system. The World Endurance Championships has a number of restrictions that Porsche put aside for the record attempt. The hybrid power train now develops a total output of 865 kw and it weighs only 849 kilograms. That’s like taking a Toyota Corolla Hybrid – reducing its weight by 1/3 and multiplying its engine power nearly 11 times. It has modified including active aerodynamics that generate over 50 per cent more downforce compared to the World Endurance Championship model. The circuit has 70 corners so this has to help. It is fast? It reduced the track record by 52 seconds down to 5minutes 19.55 seconds at an average speed of 234 km/hr. In doing so it hit a top speed of 369 km/hr. We have come a long way since 1983.