Porsche may have retired the 919 Hybrid, but it did give Top Gear’s Chris Harris the opportunity of having a go before its latest (and last?) endurance racer heads to the company’s museum.
The big league of endurance racing has always given us some of the most fascinating race cars in history. The same applies to the Porsche 919, which in its unrestricted Evo version went out and destroyed pretty much every lap record it could get its hands on, including the one at the Nurburgring.
The 919 Hybrid gave Porsche six world championship titles in total between 2015 and 2017, proving the brilliance of its engineering and design in the hardest form of racing.
Combining the ridiculous levels of downforce with one of the most clever powertrains of this era makes the 919 Hybrid a pretty simple machine to drive, provided that you possess the physical and mental ability to keep up with its mind-boggling speed.
The powertrain combined a turbocharged 500hp 2.0-liter V4 with two different energy recovery systems and an electric motor that adds an extra 400hp. Combine that with an active management system that alters parameters like the boost pressure, the electric assist and the torque vectoring depending on the car’s position on the track and you might just scratch the surface of a truly extraordinary machine.
And, unless you are a seasoned pro racing driver like, say, Mark Webber, that’s all you’re gonna do. But it should be enough to give you one of the best experiences of your life.