The Porsche 919 Hybrid is a Le Mans Prototype 1 (LMP1) dual hybrid racing car built and used by Porsche in the 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017 seasons of the FIA World Endurance Championship. It has a 90-degree V4 mid-mounted mono-turbocharged petrol engine that produces and acts as a chassis load-bearing member – and two separate energy-recovery hybrid systems to recover thermal energy from exhaust gases and convert kinetic energy into electrical energy under braking for storage into lithium-ion battery packs. In accordance with the 2014 regulations, the vehicle was placed in the class.
On 4 March 2014, the 919 Hybrid was shown to the press for the first time during the Geneva Motor Show. Porsche supplied two cars, driven by six drivers, for the season. Romain Dumas, Neel Jani, and Marc Lieb won three pole positions and the season-ending 6 Hours of São Paulo as Timo Bernhard, Brendon Hartley and Mark Webber helped the team to finish third in the World Manufacturers' Championship. In 2015, the car was further developed and was categorized into the category. Bernhard, Hartley, and Webber won four out of eight races to claim the 2015 World Endurance Drivers' Championship and the World Manufacturers' Championship. Earl Bamber, Nico Hülkenberg and Nick Tandy won the 6 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps and 24 Hours of Le Mans, driving a third 919 Hybrid.
In 2016 Dumas, Jani, and Lieb won the 6 Hours of Silverstone and the 24 Hours of Le Mans with the car after further development. Consistent performances from the trio won them the 2016 World Endurance Drivers' Championship and the team's second. Although Bernhard, Hartley, and Webber had reliability issues in the season's first three races, the trio won four of the six remaining rounds to help Porsche win its second consecutive World Manufacturers' Championship. The next year, 2017, Tandy and former Audi LMP1 driver André Lotterer joined Jani in place of Dumas and Lieb, and Bamber teamed up with Bernhard and Hartley, replacing the retired Webber. Porsche finished on the podium in the first two rounds. Bamber, Bernhard, and Hartley recovered from a 13-lap deficit to win the 24 Hours of Le Mans and three more races for Porsche's third consecutive World Drivers' and Manufacturers' Championships at the season's penultimate round, the 2017 6 Hours of Shanghai. After 2017, the 919 Hybrid project was discontinued as Porsche entered Formula E. An evolution of the car, called the 919 Evo, was demonstrated in 2018, setting multiple lap records as the overall lap record for the notorious Nordschleife.
Development Concept
In mid-May 2011, Porsche decided to compete as a works team in the Le Mans Prototype 1 (LMP1) category for the FIA World Endurance Championship, which began in 2012. Two months later, Porsche publicly announced the plans and stated that the car would debut in 2014. Around this time, the Porsche Motorsport Centre Flacht in Weissach expanded to 200 full-time employees working on the project's design, assembly and deployment. In late 2011, Porsche employed Fritz Enzinger from fellow German marque BMW to serve as the vice-president of LMP1. Enzinger oversaw the organisation of the vehicle's construction. At the end of the year, Porsche employed Alex Hitzinger—former Head of F1 Development for engine builder Cosworth and later Red Bull Racing's Head of Advanced Technologies—to oversee the car's technical design.
The car was named the 919 Hybrid to acknowledge Porsche's embarkation into hybrid car technology and honour its tradition of having similarly named vehicles compete at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. It was Porsche's first sports car prototype built since the RS Spyder debuted in 2005, the first prototype Porsche constructed to compete in the top category of sports car racing since the 1998 Porsche 911 GT1-98 and Porsche LMP1-98 and the first sports car prototype to be raced by Porsche as a factory operation since the Porsche 911 GT1-98 and Porsche LMP1-98. A total of nine chassis were built.
Design
At the end of 2012, the monocoque was finalised to comply with a request from Porsche, which wanted it to be ready for testing in June 2013. It was designed for maximum efficiency while meeting the 2014 LMP1 regulations on driver visibility with a raised cockpit. The car's developers were inexperienced in the LMP1 category, but they drew upon the 911 GT3 R Hybrid and the 918 Spyder hybrid-powered sports car. The 2014 LMP1 regulations mandated that the car be no longer than , be around to wide and tall. Aerodynamic fine-tuning of the carbon fibre with honeycomb aluminum core chassis began in February 2012, with 2,000 hours spent in wind tunnels at Porsche's Weissach facilities and the University of Stuttgart. It combined the car's low weight with a high amount of torsional rigidity and safety, allowing for the foundation of a precise wheel location via its independent multi-link suspension with pushrods and adjustable shock absorbers to exploit its Michelin tyres. The regulations reduced the car's maximum weight to .
The compact and lightweight engine was a 90-degree V4 cylinder bank mid-mounted mono-turbocharged petrol engine. It ran at 9,000 rpm, with performance coming from a direct fuel-injection system and a single Garrett-designed turbocharger with a dual overhead camshaft. It produced approximately and acted as a chassis load-bearing member. Due to the small size of the engine, the transmission casing was fitted to the rear suspension and was almost a third of the car's length. Engine cooling was achieved through a carbon-fibre-and-gold thermal airbox in its centre. Front airflow was enabled by louvres along its flank, and a single curved roll-hoop intake was mounted on its roof to allow air cooling. The car had traction control and a hydraulically operated paddle-shift seven-speed sequential gearbox with rear-lock differential mounted inside a carbon-fibre casing with titanium inserts around its high-stress sections. The brake discs were made from internally ventilated light-alloy carbon ceramic materials, and the car has power steering. For night driving, Porsche designed two four-point LED headlights at both sides of the vehicle for better visibility.
The 919 Hybrid had two separate energy-recovery hybrid systems. The rear exhaust system used a two-turbine electric generator to recover thermal energy from exhaust gasses, which exited from an off-central outlet on one side of the engine cover's dorsal fin. The front system utilised a motor–generator (MGU) on the front axle; during braking, kinetic energy was converted into electrical energy, which was stored in water-cooled A123 Systems lithium-ion battery packs installed on the passenger side, and eliminating turbo lag. Under acceleration the motor-generator operates as an electric motor to run the front wheels via a differential while the petrol engine drives the rear wheels. This temporarily made the car four-wheel drive as the electric motor directed an extra to the front wheels for a total of . The 2014 regulations divided the MGU hierarchy into increments, from . Porsche chose the category, allowing the 919 Hybrid to use per lap at Le Mans, although Porsche designed it to operate in the class due to incompatibility.
Preparation
In April 2013, Porsche named its first two drivers. Two-time co-champions of the American Le Mans Series Le Mans Prototype 2 (LMP2) class and 2010 24 Hours of Le Mans winners Timo Bernhard and Romain Dumas were chosen for their previous experience in Le Mans Prototype racing for Porsche. Two months later, Neel Jani was drafted from the Rebellion Racing team on a multi-year contract, and Red Bull Racing Formula One driver Mark Webber, whose last experience in sports car racing was the 1999 24 Hours of Le Mans for AMG-Mercedes, joined the team two days later. In December 2013, the programme's final two drivers were announced, with Mercedes-Benz Formula One test driver and Murphy Prototypes European Le Mans Series LMP2 competitor Brendon Hartley and long-time Grand Touring racer Marc Lieb completing the lineup.
Dumas shared the 14 car with Jani and Lieb while Bernhard was paired with Webber and Hartley in the No. 20 entry. According to Enzinger, Dumas and Bernhard were paired separately because Porsche wanted to create parity in terms of experience and driver weight within both crews. Enzinger said both drivers had "the most prototype experience of [the] drivers, so [they] decided to split them" and that they had "two newcomers to Porsche in Neel [Jani] and Brendon [Hartley] and decided to put one in each car. The other factor was weight. [They] looked at the weight of the drivers" and "tried to equalise that across the two cars ... to be absolutely fair to give both cars an equal chance."
Livery, testing and launch
The 919 Hybrid was liveried in white and incorporated the 'Porsche Intelligent Performance' slogan, with the first letters of each word emblazoned down the vehicle when viewed from the top. The rear wing was liveried in black with the word 'Porsche' in red letters. The team had no title sponsor, with few sponsor stickers adorning the car. Its race number was put in a red square in the middle of the top of its sidepods and near both fenders but below both door panels. On 12 June 2013, Bernhard drove the 919 Hybrid in a one-day private test session under a camouflage livery at Porsche's Weissach test track. Testing continued into September, with car development carried out at France's Circuit de Nevers Magny-Cours and Circuit Paul Ricard, Italy's Autodromo Nazionale Monza and Germany's EuroSpeedway Lausitz. Its 2013 schedule concluded at Portugal's Algarve International Circuit in December.
On 4 March 2014, the car was officially revealed at a press conference during the Geneva Motor Show. From 24 to 26 March, Porsche held its first two-car endurance tests at the Circuit Paul Ricard and fine-tuned the 919 Hybrid's setups with its drivers, covering a total of with multiple technical problems stopping both cars several times during the three-day session. The team stayed at the track for the official two-day pre-season test. During the Friday night session, Hartley set the fastest overall lap time of 1 minute, 41.289 seconds in a low-downforce setup.
Subsequent alterations 2015 version
Porsche redesigned the 919 Hybrid for the 2015 season, carrying over the concept from 2014. It featured a new chassis with an identical layout, manufactured as one piece to save weight, dropping from overall to . The car was categorised into the class because of a lighter, refined and improved hybrid system increasing its maximum power to , following a decision made by Porsche around early March 2015. The car's nose-cone impact structure was lowered and narrowed, with its lead supported by the front bodywork's leading edge. Its curved louvres were replaced by two straight slats with a bulge on the rear floor. Porsche changed the car's centralised exhaust system to a twin exhaust-pipe layout arranged symmetrically to the axis for improved output and more efficient aerodynamics.
The 2015 car began private testing at Porsche's Weissach test track with Lieb in December 2014. Drivers further tested it at UAE's Yas Marina Circuit, the Bahrain International Circuit and Spain's Ciudad del Motor de Aragón from January to March. The first pictures of the car were published online on 16 January, and it was officially revealed to the press at Circuit Paul Ricard's official two-day pre-season test session on 26 March. Porsche used three liveries for the 24 Hours of Le Mans. The No. 17 car was adorned in red as a tribute to Porsche's first overall victory at Le Mans with the Porsche 917 in 1970. The No. 18 entry was liveried in black to showcase the close technical similarities between the 919 Hybrid and the 918 Spyder. The No. 19 vehicle was adorned in white, Germany and Porsche's national standard colour.
2016 version