Porsche has lapped New York in its Le Mans car

By topgear, 04 May 2018

Last year, Porsche served motorsport fans a big plate of disappointment with an added side of sadness by announcing it was pulling the plug on the FIA World Endurance Championship’s top-flight LMP1 class to focus its efforts on a Formula E entry for 2019. Wahh.

But, to publicise its endurance racing efforts, for the last year the 919 Le Mans car has been on a farewell tour – a global crusade to show the masses how awesome and technical the hybrid 919 really is.

You may have seen the 919 Evo – a lighter, more powerful 919 Hybrid unshackled from the WEC’s many rules and regulations that recently set a 1m 41.770s lap around Spa. That’s just one of the PR prongs. Porsche still has a couple of standard 919s which it’s also using to spread the love.

Recently, Porsche took endurance racing to the people by literally hitting the streets and driving the 900bhp, 320+kph racer around New York, something it did in London a few years ago. Weaving in and out of yellow cabs, around the homeless and across those cool drains with steam coming out of it just like the movies, the 919 went on its own open-top bus tour of the city that never sleeps.

Quite the daily driver. And full-stop to an era of racing that saw 17 victories, and three Le Mans wins in a row. But now it can add ‘standstill in Manhattan traffic’ to that long list of achievements.