Le Mans 2014

With a podium finish at the start of the 2014 World Endurance Championship (WEC) season at Silverstone and pole position in Belgium at Spa-Francorchamps, Porsche has progressively made its way back into the premier league of sports car racing this season.

This represents a successful start for the newly-founded factory Porsche Team, which in the light of the brave innovations in the new 919 Hybrid was not a foregone conclusion. Such technological breakthroughs herald a new era in the WEC and also at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. The racing car is a technology platform and test laboratory for future series production road cars. No other race car on the WEC starting grid has such an efficient and complex hybrid system as the new Porsche.

The two Porsche 919 Hybrid cars with start numbers 14 and 20 will be driven by two trios of drivers: Romain Dumas (France), Neel Jani (Switzerland), Marc Lieb (Germany) and Timo Bernhard (Germany), Brendon Hartley (New Zealand), Mark Webber (Australia). These six world-class drivers have between them a total of 37 appearances at Le Mans. Despite being a record holder at Le Mans with 16 overall victories, this year the sports car manufacturer has no recent experience of racing at the top LMP category to benefit from. For the first year of the company’s LMP1 project, the target is to get one of the fast Porsche 919 Hybrids to the finish line at the French 24 hour marathon.