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Neel Jani has broken the official lap record at the Spa-Francorchamps circuit in Belgium in his Porsche 919 Hybrid Evo, a heavily modified version of the LMP1 car.
Mercedes F1 driver Lewis Hamilton set a record time of 1:42.553 in 2017 during the qualifying of the Belgian Grand Prix and also claimed pole position.
Neel Jani shattered Hamilton’s lap record with a time of 1:41.770 in his Porsche which is the fastest unofficial lap time, achieving a top speed of 359 km/h with an average speed of 245.61 km/h on his run. He was over seven-tenths of a second faster than the Mercedes F1 car of Lewis Hamilton.
Jani a Swiss professional racing driver of Indian Gujarati origin said "The 919 Evo is brutally impressive," "It is definitely the fastest car I ever drove. The grip level is at a fully new dimension for me, I couldn't imagine this amount beforehand. The speed at which everything happens on a single lap with the 919 Evo is that fast that the demand on reaction speed is very different to what I was used to in the WEC.
"We are not only faster than the F1 pole from 2017. Today's lap was 12 seconds faster compared to our WEC pole position from last year! We have had three very intense days at Spa. Today I knew on the very first lap in the morning that the car's performance was super. The race engineers did a great job setting up the car and the Michelin tires are sensational. A big thank you to Porsche for this experience."
The Evo 919 is fundamentally based on the 2017 WEC car. The car has been heavily modified for this record attempt. The engine and drive train components have remained the same, but without the restrictions of the WEC regulations, and also tuning the car to produce a staggering 1160 BHP while the WEC car produces close to 1000BHP with its hybrid V4 twin-turbo motor.
The aerodynamic package in the car is more aggressive than the WEC car with a massive rear wing that is pushed out well past the rear extremities of the car’s bodywork, knife-edge side skirts, a much bigger rear diffuser, front, and rear DRS to reduce drag in the straights and no headlights to reduce extra weight.
Fritz Enzinger, Porsche's Vice President of LMP1 said “This was an absolutely fantastic lap – an outstanding performance from Neel and the result of great engineering," "Today's track record impressively proves the ultimate performance of the most innovative race car of its time. Our target was to show what the Porsche 919 Hybrid is able to do when we loosen the restrictions that normally come from the regulations."
The project's chief race engineer, Stephen Mitas, said it was especially rewarding to upgrade the 919 (with some of the pre-planned developments for 2018, before Porsche pulled the plug on its LMP1 program) and show off its true potential.
"It was kind of an engineer's dream come true for us," he said. "Having developed, improved and raced the car for four years, the guys had a very close relationship to it. We all knew, no matter how successful the 919 Hybrid was, it could never show its full abilities. Actually, even the Evo version doesn't fully exploit the technical potential. This time we were not limited by regulations but resources.
"It is a very satisfying feeling that what we've done to the car was enough to crack the Formula 1 record."
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