I first saw the Porsche 919 in 2014 at a pre-season test session.
While the cars now retired four years later
and it's a Le Mans legend. A Le Mans winning legend.
And Porsche it's gonna let me drive it.
But before I was allowed anywhere near the real thing,
I had to go to Germany to drive it in virtual reality.
Behind me is the Porsche 919 simulator
where the Le Mans winning drivers practice their craft
in this very, very complicated machine.
It's like the world's most glamorous computer game really.
Imagine Toca 2, but costing well over a million quid.
I've heard that a lot of people get sick in these things
so I'm a little bit nervous. I've not been in one before.
Let's give it a go.
It feels preposterously fast.
I mean, I'm just through third gear in no time at all.
Now you can sit for most of the main straight
at 185, 186 miles an hour.
Beautiful Spain laid out ahead of us.
Now, this bottom corner.
Would you believe it's 6th gear.
It certainly isn't for me.
This is remarkable. Last time I was here I was breaking everywhere.
Wing it over the years. Slide.
If you try and gas it with any steering lock on at all
I think it's a very expensive... Oh, that's off.
What's "bollocks" in German?
That really is not a game. It's not a sit and have a great fun.
You think it's the ultimate game, it's not.
It's confined,
there's not a lot of air in there, even with the fan.
I find it quite unpleasant the way the screen moves.
And so the euphoric I'm about to have a great time
going in a big fun computer game thing I was like about 20 minutes ago,
yeah, I'd rather be drinking a pint of rancid milk right now.
And before I left I had a poke around a very special 919:
The Evo version.
A souped-up special that Porsche was sending on a global roadshow
to beat lap times and prove just how fast this car could have been
under looser racing regulations.
Well, we're in, and would you believe it, because if you saw him stood next to me,
I fit Mark Webber's seat.
It's just getting the leverage on the wheel
because you have to put quite a bit of energy into the wheel.
The cornering speeds are so high.
Its sixth gear through the first...
Through turns two and three is sixth--
Well, it's getting up into sixth gear. It's bonkers, it's flat-out.
Last time we went there Neil
I think we were braking going down to third.
It's tight in here, but the packaging is beautiful.
Everything's on the steering wheel.
Ferrari think they've got lots of buttons on the 458.
No, this has more buttons.
Roughly speaking 1,200 horsepower, 880 kilograms.
Do the mathematics on that.
Eight hundred and eighty kilograms, 1,200 horsepower, four-wheel drive.
And it was quicker than a Formula One car in qualifying spec.
So, what is a 919?
Well, it's a mid-engined endurance racer designed to win Le Mans,
which it did a few times.
It is the most complex car I've ever seen.
Using a turbocharged 2-litre V4 internal combustion engine,
powering the rear wheels with around 500 horsepower
and a single electric motor for the front wheels,
with another 500 horsepower too.
That's around a thousand horsepower in this configuration.
Four-wheel drive, massive downforce
and less than 900 kilograms.
It will marmalize anything less than a Formula One car
and is reliable enough to do so for 24 hours. And probably more.
It's a very, very special and complicated machine
and is tended to by a vast team of people.
First up, some familiarization laps on wet tyres and a slightly damp track.
Okay, so, this is the 919.
Weather's not been brilliant.
The most complicated racing car ever made, I think.
Porsche letting us drive it here at Aragón. Wow.
So, what's it like?
Well...
Immediately, the controls feel easy,
nothing too intimidating about them.
Not much feel through the brake pedal. I'll try and go a bit quicker.
A little bit damp here in places.
Well immediately it's up to the max.
A bit of vibration so I can't see too much.
I'm doing 185 miles an hour.
Without the car even thinking about it.
The back straight feels like it goes on forever.
What's it like into this big turn at the bottom?
I gather it's a bit quick.
And then just feel the downforce.
The boost out the corners.
With the hybrid, the electricity is savage.
And then it just goes!
Fantastic thing.
With all the complication it feels...
quite simple to drive.
Don't be too aggressive on the way in, don't get on the throttle too early.
It's that initial boost
that it's just bloody addictive.
Because the car feels a bit different in every corner.
There is a sense that it is doing stuff that I don't know about.
Well, it's more like a...
bloody spaceship than a car. What a thing.
The traction it develops and the speed it wants to carry through the corners.
I'm not even scratching the surface here.
I can't believe it's doing this on a wet tyre.
Think what's going on underneath me, all the electricity,
the internal combustion engine, differentials.
It's just so much going on.
Feel the bloody G-forces there.
What a bloody machine!
This is the spiritual successor to the 917.
Utterly dominant!
Just engineering employed to crush a racing circuit.
It's sensational.
I've never driven a racing car that feels like it's doing more thinking
around the lap than me.
Learn to ride a bicycle and your father or your mother's behind you,
and the stabilizers are coming off and they're holding a seat,
that's how this car feels it's...
However hard you feel you're concentrating
and whatever inputs you're putting into the car
it feels like the car's doing more and being cleverer.
The way that it deploys its performance on the circuit according to what it knows,
takes some adjusting to,
because you think that you will make compensations for that,
but the car is already doing it.
So what you end up doing is going doubly slowly in places
because you could just stay flat and let the car sort it out.
And on the back straight through... the final corner onto the back straight
I was just lifting because I thought it's a bit damp here.
If you just stay flat
it brings the boost in when you need the boost.
I mean, it's so clever... so clever
And what's remarkable is that through all of this cleverness
transpires a really rather lovely, simple driving experience.
You just get in it, turn the wheel, hit the pedals,
it does what you want to do.
G-forces are a bit extreme for an old man like myself.
A mind-blowing experience really because it just drags performance out the circuit.
I've done a few laps on slicks, it's a bit damp,
but I'd love to do some more.
If that's my only ever run in a 919, I'm a happy man. Wow!
Just imagine if it was your company race car.
Neel Yani's over there somewhere. I'd better go and shake his hand.
Talk me through this thing then, because there's so much technology in the car,
but you have to harness it to help you.
Yeah, you have to understand the technology,
you have to understand the hybrid, the particular engine,
and then use it to your benefit.
Because if you don't quite understand it it can quite quickly work against you.
So it's worth it to sit down and usually with the engineers
and have a look at the data, as you just did before
just to understand what you can do as a driver to use it for your benefit.
So given your racing background did it take time to adapt to this type of car?
I grew up with that car to be honest,
because that car was completely new, we build it
and I was there in the whole development phase,
so basically we grew together you can say.
But we figured out that, you know,
because the energy is limited we can use from the battery a lot,
so we want to use it the most efficient way
and that's 100 percent at one goal.
The bit that I found really interesting was how much the car
wanted to almost coast through the apex.
It felt I could carry incredible speed off the throttle.
Come off the throttle and just turn the car, it wanted to rotate.
And there's a big amount of grip down the side of the car.
I was just waiting for it to do this and it just didn't--
If I tried that in my GT3 car I would just spin.
Yeah, well, that's a narrow car
and we have to hide down for speed on there.
And the level until you can swing the car really needs a lot.
But that's for me a real racing car, you know.
It's you, the person is linear, and not the machine.
So now with some confidence and words of wisdom from Neel,
it's time to push on as hard as I dare.
Apologies for sounding so knackered,
but it was tough to drive and talk at the same time.
Right, I'm on slicks now.
Automatically the car feels much, much more alive.
It's so clever, however hard I feel I'm thinking,
I think it's doing more thinking than me around the circuit.
You can feel it managing power, torque.
Sailing.
Acceleration. When to do things, when not to do things.
Oh, the way it comes out of that turn, is just
one of the best feelings.
G-forces are high.
I've been driving this thing for 25 minutes.
And I will be knackered.
Downforce. The traction. The mid-corner grip.
The way that you can just roll it into a corner off throttle.
How un-Porsche is that?
This is a car that likes a turning throttle into a corner.
Who'd have thought it?
Somehow they fashioned from all this complication, they fashioned
a car that is intuitive and fun to drive.
Out of this corner now by the way, I stay flat,
and the computer decides when to deploy the boost.
It's all done according to mapping. So I don't have to worry.
The first few laps I did I was holding off then,
because I thought I had better control the boost.
But actually, the car was doing it, not me!
The car was saying don't be stupid on this corner.
I'll give you the boost when you're ready.
And that's the most intense thing I've done in a racing car.
The way that it deploys all of its power,
and performs differently for each corner is amazing.
You have to sort of let go of what you think should happen.
In the history of Porsche racing cars it's right up there.
962, 956, 917. All of them!
My neck is shattered.
It's like a workout.
How they do it for so long I don't know.
With a combination of that little V4 engine and an electric motor
just proves that the hybrid future could still be pretty bloody exciting.
The speed you can carry
just by rolling the car off throttle is incredible.
Every time I thought I'd go a bit faster
and just roll the car through the slow corners,
it turns so well.
High speed is amazing I was backing off onto the main straight,
but, of course, the engine map is managing the boost anyway
and the electricity anyway so if you stay flat if does it for you.
But I was just trying to build my way in, you know.
Seven laps is not so much when you're trying to build in.
It's the most astonishing motorcar.
I've never driven a car that feels like it's thinking its way around the circuit.
Thank you very much for letting me drive it. Thank you.