Warp Speed

Driving Porsche's Le Mans-winning hybrid is like being transported to a parallel universe – one where space and time blur in your brain.

- Paul Englert

CEREAL bars taste awful at five o’clock in the morning. But the sticky, cardboard-flavoured confections have the energy that I urgently need today, so I take a sip of water and force them down like a good boy.

Just four hours later I’m in Spain watching Porsche factory driver Neel Jani warming up a 919 Hybrid at Motorland Aragon. While it’s not the derestricted Evo version (the car that set the mindscrambling 5:19.54 new outright Nurburgring Nordschleife lap record), the LMP1-spec 919 hardly looks slow. Within a few laps Jani moves the braking point on the start/finish straight much closer to the entry of Turn One and sets a reference time of 1:23.503sec. These numbers will haunt me throughout the day. Why? Because after prep time in the Porsche simulator, a detailed safety briefing and even more detailed instruction on how to find my way around the 919’s cockpit, I’m being allowed to play at being a Porsche factory test driver for the day. And yes, that does include a ‘works’ contract. Well, of sorts.