Knowing nothing about this subject, I'm a bit confused by the parent: The first section talks about how incredible the performance is - "comically fast", "nuts", etc. The second to last paragraph seems to say that it is easily done.

Would you explain to easily confused, non-car-racing-enthusiasts? EDIT: In fact, I should ask: What is the significance of Nurburgring?

The 919 was built originally to run in the LMP1-H class in the World Endurance Championship and the 24 hours of Le Mans. The WEC rules enforce some artifical performance limits on the car. For example they are limited on the amount of gasoline per lap they can use, and there is a max flow rate that is enforced by a fuel flow sensor. They are also limited in how much energy they can use per lap from the hybrid system. which is lower than the actual capacity of the hybrid system. for example you could watch the onboard with the telemetry that shows the battery status. They would come through Ford Chicane (The last before start finish at Le Mans) with the battery showing empty and then hit pit straight and come across start finish and the battery indicator would jump up to 1/4 or 1/2 full indicating that the car had harvested more power on that lap under braking than it was allowed to consume.

According to Porsche PR the WEC specification car the ICE put out 500hp. the EVO car did 720. and the Hybrid system went from 400 to 440hp.

Aero Development is also limited in WEC in not only the number of aero iterations you get per season, but what you can do like the size of the rear wing, and the rear diffuser. and of course they added a drag reduction system, that basically drops the rear wing out of the airflow on the straights to reduce drag.

they were also able to cut the weight by 39KG by taking out the windshield wipers, headlights, air conditioner and all the electronics that the FIA/ACO mandates in the WEC.

they also had a special tire.

as a point of comparison the 919 in WEC spec qualified at SPA for the 6 hour race with a 3 lap average 1:54.097. the evo did it this year in 1:41.770.

"What is the significance of Nurburgring?"

It's a very long and very tricky track. It has everything: superfast sections, slow sections, steep uphill and downhill, bumps, banking, often wet. If a car does well on this track it will do well almost everywhere. It's called the "green hell". I don't think there is another track worldwide left that can compare.

The Mountain Circuit on Isle of Man.

This is easily some of the craziest racing you're every going to see. There's zero margin for error and it generally highlights this every year.

Equally legendary, often deadly, and also absolutely wouldn't even be considered if someone proposed it today.

And the Nürburgring has various safety features. The Mountain Circuit has basically nothing, just a road.

And accessible only for a few days a year.

Most race tracks have perhaps 6-12 corners or so. The Nürburgring Nordschleife has 154.

It's 20.8km long and has 300 meters of elevation change along its length. It is an absolute monster, and a grueling test of both car and driver.

It's also so big, that you probably won't be able to see it at first on Google maps. Try zooming out a bit ;-)

The record wasn't just beaten, it was shattered by 15%. That involves not just doing the straight parts a little bit faster and braking a little later; it means doing entire sections crazy fast. That's the difference between the record being easy to beat, and Porsche having lowered it by 1 minute and more.

To drive a race car really, really fast requires rhythm. You have to be able tell when something is amiss Before it actually is, because then it is too late. Having rhythm is essential, so you need an database of events on that particular track, in that particular car in order to develop your rhythm. You need to have the track absolutely memorized to the extent that you can visualize every single inch of it as you are "driving" it in your imagination so that you can "bench race" it.

It also requires anticipation; you have to know Exactly what the car is going to, in every situation, and that gives you the ability to make corrections Before the fact, because again; during is too late. Now couple these things with the sheer length, number of corners and top speed of the Nurburgring and you have an idea of what a lap like that takes.

> What is the significance of Nurburgring?

It's both old and good. Almost a century of racing, setting and breaking records went down on it. (Also you can drive on it yourself w/ your own car).

It is also not a tiny circuit with only a handful of corners. It is harder to tune a car for nurburgring than a nascar oval. So the theory goes that nurburgring results are more representative of overall (realworld) performance.

It's also very bumpy. More like a normal road than a race track. A team manager once told me that not every driver can go full throttle on the longest straight because of the bumps.

It may even be bumpier than the current standard for German public roads, which are generally of exceedingly high quality.

Most people know about the unrestricted sections of the autobahn, and it is certainly fun to flog a rental Opel Corsa with a 1.0L 3-cylinder engine to 160kph, while being overtaken like you were standing still by various Porsches and big BMW/Mercedes/Audis.

But the real fun is that the general speed limit is 100kph (62mph) off the autobahn and outside of towns, even for relatively small and curvy roads. Couple this with the generally very high standard of German roads, and you can have a hell of a lot of fun within the speed limit.

I'm in southern Germany at the moment, visiting my girlfriend's family. The winding roads in the Schwarzwald area are absolutely amazing to drive, even in the little Corsa we're renting. You have to really flog it in second gear to get any speed going uphill, but it is so damn rewarding. And you notice so many other people doing the same, in all kinds of cars and on motorbikes.

I know it's a bit of a cliché, but driving enjoyment really is part of the German mentality.

> It may even be bumpier than the current standard for German public roads, which are generally of exceedingly high quality.

http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/794/698/475...

> But the real fun is that the general speed limit is 100kph (62mph) off the autobahn and outside of towns, even for relatively small and curvy roads.

Well they certainly remain to exist, but sadly there is a tendency since ~10 years or so to stick a 70 speed limit anywhere where the road deviates the tiniest bit from a ruler. Nowadays they are often coupled with "no overtaking" signs. Apparently the level of driving skill has sunk so low, that people neither know how fast they can drive through a curve, nor can they realize for themselves that overtaking in a curve is forbidden anyway and they shouldn't need signs to remind them of that.

> I'm in southern Germany at the moment, visiting my girlfriend's family.

In the south road conditions are a bit better, but still many municipal and country roads are in either poor or piss poor condition.

Up north, I expect the roads to be more similar to the ones in Denmark that I'm used to, ie. potholed, frost damaged and sort-of repaired.

Honestly, you have no idea how good you have it road-wise, compared to Denmark or the UK or especially the US.

Down here in the Schwarzwald/Schwaben area, they really are in amazing condition and the majority of roads are still 100kph or at least 80kph in the trickier sections. Sure, there are a few villages with blanket 30kph limits (WTF) and the occasional 70kph sections around tricky intersections. But other than that, it's very good still, and 100kph on some surprisingly curving roads. Mostly unlimited autobahn too, although I know they're reigning that in as well.

>> Honestly, you have no idea how good you have it road-wise, compared to Denmark or the UK or especially the US.

But roads are easy when in a small country with a dense population like Germany. Heck, you can drive from one side of Germany to the other in a single tank of gas. Compare that to properly large roads like those in Canada, or Russia. (I'd add Australia but the weather is so good there that they have no word for pothole.)

How small Germany is compared to one of Canada's medium-sized provinces.

https://mapfight.appspot.com/de-vs-british.columbia/germany-...

Not a lot of that is very densely populated though, and doesn't need very many roads. You need to compare areas with roughly the same population density, and when I do that, Danmark and the UK and the US completely fail to measure up to Germany.

The average population density of Germany is ~46 times greater than British Columbia. So yeah, obviously you get some long stretches of badly-maintained roads in BC. That wasn't my point, though.

The roads in comparable situations between Denmark and Germany lean very heavily towards Germany having much higher quality. For goodness' sake, they'll put up "Straßenschäden" signs for even tiny little holes in the asphalt. In Denmark, they won't put up a warning sign until someone falls in, and sometimes not even then.

> The average population density of Germany is ~46 times greater than British Columbia.

... and accordingly traffic is much denser, and roads will see a lot more wear.

>I'm in southern Germany at the moment, visiting my girlfriend's family. The winding roads in the Schwarzwald area are absolutely amazing to drive,

I learned to drive there. Recommend this route:

Sasbachwalden > Seebach > Ottenhoefen > Allerheiligen > Ruhestein

https://www.google.com/maps/dir/77887+Sasbachwalden,+Germany...

Have fun! The race is always won on the corners, not on the straights ...

> A sub-5 Ring time would easily be possible with a non-homologated F1 car similar to this unrestricted 919.

Easily? No, I respectfully disagree with your assessment of what is involved. CFD is not even close to being able to accurately predict a race car's handling so therefore it would take testing--a lot of it. In all likelihood it would cost hundreds of millions of dollars to design, test and build a GP car that could beat that time. It would require wind tunnel time, new CFD models, new motors and on and on.

So yes, while I agree it is possible with a genius like Vettel or Hamilton, or IMO that would be a perfect mission for Max (who I think is of the caliber of Senna, and as Senna disciple, I don't say that lightly) at the wheel; it could probably happen. Of course, we would also need a designer of the caliber of an Adrian Newey, because no single modern F1 track even approaches The Ring. It would be a massive undertaking.

Easily... as in the tech is already there. 10 years ago BMW estimated a 5:15 was possible [1]. Since then we've had a decade+ of tire, aero, power-unit and transmission development, not to mention a number of 'Ring resurfacing efforts. There was no DRS or KERS back then either.

I don't think it'd cost mid 9-figures to integrate and tweak technology that is already well-understood. But then again it is [M]otorsport, where the [M] stands for Money. Red Bull could likely do it for low 8-figures with Mr. Max in the seat.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nordschleife_lap_times...

Worth noting that Stefan Bellof's Porsche 956 very probably had some restrictor plates or some such reducing how much air it could breathe in (its successor, the 962, usually did in race trim) when he set the old record. The 917/30 was probably the only Porsche that ever raced without significant technical rules in place designed to slow it down.

> The 919 Evo holds the Spa Record because the F1 record was done under all sorts of homologation restrictions. A sub-5 Ring time would easily be possible with a non-homologated F1 car similar to this unrestricted 919.

It's all about how much money you are willing to spend and how far you're willing to deviate from the tested racing formula, right? The 919 Evo is very fast but there are a few really obvious ways they could spend more to make it faster. I don't think they even re-geared the transmission for this track (he was hitting the rev limiter), and while they've changed some of the aero I think the powertrain was using retuned, existing stuff. It could be a much more powerful car. I mean, the gasoline side of the powertrain is a 2-liter four cylinder...

On avoiding the carousel, I'm wondering if the hybrid system (a short burst of acceleration) almost entirely negates the advantage of taking it. Plus I'll bet there is more time to be gained on the rest of the track (especially at these speeds) if you don't have to set the suspension up to handle the carousel. I also noticed he barely dipped into the mini-carousel, despite the common line being to hit the bottom apex there.

As someone who knows nothing about cars, what surprised me was just how much of this was braking right after you accelerate, which in hindsight is obvious given the turns at crazy speeds, but still.

A good eye. One of the biggest lessons taught in any advanced car control course is that the brakes/gas aren't just for stopping/going. By using them to modulate weight transfer you can change grip levels at F/R, adjust vehicle yaw (+/- turning radius), smooth out suspension undulations, etc.

I would have assumed that it was primarily just because of the principle that to go as fast as possible, you need to be using 100% of your grip at all times either accelerating, braking, or turning.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circle_of_forces

I've sometimes thought that it would be a neat addition to a performance car's instrumentation to have a gauge that showed where you were in the traction circle.

> I've sometimes thought that it would be a neat addition to a performance car's instrumentation to have a gauge that showed where you were in the traction circle.

Didn't the Nissan Skyline GTR have this?

Are you maybe thinking of the front torque gauge? Thats the only gauge I can think of on the classic Skyline GTR that isn’t common on most cars, but that’s still not a traction circle like GP referenced.

I was actually thinking of the Top Gear review of the R34 Skyline, which shows a 2-axis G-meter (so basically the same thing). Not sure if this was ever standard equipment, though, since I can't find reference to it elsewhere.

Source: https://youtu.be/oAp1CXnAqGs?t=50s

Also remember these cars are built with KERS/DRS:

"During braking, a generator at the front axle converts the car’s kinetic energy into electrical energy. In the split exhaust system, one turbine drives the turbocharger while another converts surplus energy into electrical energy. The braking energy contributes 60 per cent, with the remaining 40 per cent coming from exhaust gas. The recuperated electrical energy is stored temporarily in a lithium-ion battery and feeds an electric motor on demand. “On demand” means: the driver wants to accelerate and calls up the energy at the press of a button. In accordance with the latest regulation changes, the power from the combustion engine is just under 368 kW (500 HP), and the output from the electric motor is well over 294 kW (400 HP)."

Too late to edit but Pflanzgarten has been renamed in honor of Bellof.

Looking at the linked list of sections, it seems the overall stretch is still called Pflanzgarten, just a subsection of that (Stefan-Bellof-S) was renamed in honour of Bellof.

is it not kmh?

Yes. Unless somehow they are getting to a top speed of 370mph and seem to be engine rpm limited at that.

Absolutely no possibility it’s 370mph, so yeah, it’s in kilometers. That’s 230mph for the imperial measurement folks (still very damn fast, especially for that section. While mostly straight, it is deceptively hard to do in many cars, aka ones not from a professional racing team, at even 150mph, speaking from experience).