As I was always interested in exciting sportscar racing and also being hooked by speed
records, it was a no brainer to take the opportunity to ask the 2015 Le Mans 24h winner
Nico Hülkenberg about the latest attempts of Porsche to set outright lap records in Spa
and the Nürburgring Nordschleife. They did so with an evolution of their 2017 WEC
winner, the Porsche 919. The car was heavily modified over the winter, with more
power available as well as aerodynamic modifications and less weight. In the
Thursdays` press conference at the F1 GP in Hockenheim, I had the chance to ask
him: Here is what he - and Sebastain Vettel - said:
TSS: Nico, you surely followed the record runs of Porsche with the 919 Evolution car in
Spa and the Nordschleife. Would you liked to have driven that car and would you like to do
something similar with an evolution of your Formula One Renault?
NH: Yeah, I would have liked to drive that car but I would have been way off the record or the pace, you know. You
really need an expert for the Norschleife there. Timo was perfectly qualified for that, I’m not. I’ve done a few laps there
but it’s a crazy circuit and you probably watched the on-board and you see how bumpy it is, how dynamic. It’s a hell of
thing and the speed he goes, it’s pretty insane, positively insane and a cool thing to do by Porsche to go and crack a
few track records and do some funky stuff. Yeah, very tempting. I know that car, obviously, but in that conversion it
must be so much fun and cool. The thing with a Formula One, we would be struggling with ride heights and damper
travel and stuff.
SV: We can resurface the track. It’s the fashion these days, so re-surface the Nordschleife. Let’s go there!
(In fact there was a modern F1 car doing a demo lap on the Nordschleife some ten years ago: Nick Heidfeld drove a
BMW-Sauber in 2007 tp the excitement of the fans!)