Porsche tests 2014 Le Mans car

These are the first ‘official’ spy pictures of Porsche’s new Le Mans prototype racer. The LMP1 car will compete against rivals from Toyota and VW Group stablemate Audi in the World Endurance Series and the Le Mans 24-hour race next year.

Despite the fact that sister brand Audi already dominates endurance racing with its diesel e-tron LMP1 car, the Audi and Porsche’s petrol-powered racer will fight each other for overall race wins.

Audi has wiped the floor with its rivals in recent Le Mans 24-hours events, winning 11 of the last 13 races. However, its 11 overall wins at the French classic still fall behind Porsche’s 16 victories – making the Stuttgart brand the most successful make at Le Mans of all time. Porsche last won Le Mans in 1998 with a 911 GT1.

The roll-out of the new Porsche LMP1 car was undertaken at the test track at Porsche’s R&D centre in Weissach, Germany. The car was driven by Porsche factory driver, Timo Bernhard, and the entire Porsche board of management was in attendance for the event.

Porsche has been working on its return to endurance racing since mid-2011, with the first LMP1 prototype chassis – a completely clean-sheet design from the ground up – taking to the track a couple of weeks earlier than planned.

“We are well on schedule,” said Fritz Enzinger, Head of the LMP1 programme. “Our newly-formed team has worked with utmost concentration on getting this highly complex vehicle on the track as soon as possible.

This allows us a few additional weeks for more testing and further development. From 2014, the regulations are primarily based on efficiency. This makes the competition amongst engineers more interesting and presents us with completely new challenges.”

Porsche has expanded its motorsport centre at Weissach to cope with the demands of its upcoming race programme. The firm has built and new workshop and admin building to house its 200-strong race team.

Porsche has confirmed that the testing of the new car will be undertaken by Berhard and fellow factory driver Romain Dumas on tracks around the world.

“During the development of our new LMP1 race car, we faced the same challenge as in the series production development of our road cars,” said Wolfgang Hatz, Board Member for Research and Development, Porsche AG. “Our aim was to achieve the best possible efficiency without compromising performance.”