Why Porsche doesn't race in F1

after winning the 24 Hours of Le Mans the engineers at Porsche decided it wasn't enough for them and built a car that was capable of lapping the circuit to Spa franceschan faster than today's F1 cars it's called the 919 tribute and it makes more power and more downforce than an F1 car the cop had no purpose but to prove What Porsche could do if there were no rules holding them back and when they took it to the Nurburgring they set a 519.5 which might not sound like a lot but it's 45 seconds faster than the second fastest lap around the nordstriper in fact Porsche hold three of the top four spots on the nurburgring's leaderboard with the other one being held by Volkswagen who own Porsche the 919 tribute has since been dethroned as the lap record holder around Spa but for Porsche to still be within half a second of the overall record despite their car having a roof and weighing 200 kilograms more is crazy and then there's this the Porsche 911 GT2 rsmr it held the lap record of the Nurburgring from June 2021 to October this year and the car that Mercedes needed to beat it was a 2.75 million dollar hyper car with a modified version of an F1 in the back and even then Mercedes only beat the Mrs record by eight seconds Porsche haven't yet released the successor to the Mr and with the knowledge of the amg-1's time no doubt they'll once again steal the crown of the fastest production car around the Nurburgring and they'll do it without needing to rely on technology from F1 and that's because Porsche don't need F1 Porsche regard racing is an essential part to engineering development and so they've been involved with Motorsport almost as long as they've been making cars traditionally it's very rare for Porsche to enter two consecutive races with their car in the same specification such as their determination to build the best racing cars this all sounds like Porsche would be perfectly suited to F1 then but there's a reason that they aren't in fact there's lots of reasons but here is the first one in my video titled watch the point of F1 I stated that one of the main reasons is for manufacturers to sell more stuff be it cars energy drinks or overpriced clothes everyone has something to sell in F1 but with a backlog of two to four years on cars like the 992 GT3 Porsche can't really sell any more cars a cool perk of making the same car for 60 years is that everyone knows what a Porsche 911 looks like the 911 is the sports car and Porsche writing their name on the side of an F1 car probably isn't going to convince people to buy one because they don't need convincing things are different for teams like Mercedes and what used to be Renault because for them claiming their road cars used F1 technology would probably help sell a few more Porsche are known for building cars to last and over 70 of the 1 million 911s ever built were still on the road as of 2017. for me that's why Porsche's success at Le Mans is far more relevant than any success they could have in F1 the Mercedes AMG one needs a full engine rebuild after just 30 000 miles thanks to the nature of the F1 engine they put in the back Porsches however often go over 150 000 miles without a single issue take this 997 Carrera 4S which did a hundred thousand miles within its first three years of life and has since reached 300 000 miles and it did that within just 12 years at nearly 25 000 miles a year which in the UK is two and a half times more than the average it's cars like that that show why Le Mans is more relevant for Porsche than formula one ever will be running a car flat out for 24 hours without a break is exactly what Porsche need to do to prove how well they make cars racing in F1 where the engines rarely last more than 1500 miles is hardly going to show how well Porsche builds engines and speaking of engines I can't think of another brand that is as synonymous with an engine as Porsche is with the flat 6. a quick search of the Flat 6 will bring up mostly images of Porsche 911s and in fact Porsche are so well known for it that there's an article titled seven flat six-powered vehicles that aren't Porsches that means that any car with the Flat 6 that isn't a Porsche 911 is noteworthy and a surprise formula one's engine rules won't allow Porsche to use their Flat 6 engine in an F1 car and therefore it doesn't really make sense from a development perspective to race there however there is one thing that makes sense formula one has made it clear that one of the goals for the next set of engine regulations is for them to run on sustainable fuels it was either that or battery power and losing the sound of combustion engines would probably drive a lot of fans out of the sport similarly Porsche has made it clear that they're working to avoid having to get rid of the combustion engine while of course it makes hybrids and electric cars as well without the Flat 6 engine the 911 wouldn't be a 911 so Porsche's future depends on it racing in Formula 1 using sustainable fuel would allow Porsche to develop technologies that allow it to keep producing combustion cars in an age-dominated by electricity without the sound of its engine a car wouldn't have assault and so if Porsche can make a car that retains its Soul while still being good for the planet then they'll dominate the sports car industry even more than they currently do of course Porsche's Engineers could probably do this on their own and in an episode of Top Gear earlier this year they demonstrated that they can burning this synthetic fuel would only release the carbon dioxide that was extracted to produce it so it's completely carbon neutral Porsche have invested 75 million dollars into a company that's producing these fuels so it clearly cares about the cause in a way that other brands like Mercedes and Ferrari maybe don't in that sense Porsche is actually a better candidate to racing F1 from 2026 than the other two but there's is nowhere we'll be losing Mercedes or Ferrari but at the same time to Porsche really need F1 to help their push for sustainable fuel if they're already putting in nearly a hundred million dollars into specific Research into the fuel then why should they put a similar amount into formula one where the fuel is only a small part of the racing it just seems like a waste of money of course Porsche will have no trouble securing enough sponsorship to fund their whole F1 campaign but still they don't need the fuel technology earlier this year Porsche set out the requirement for them to race in F1 and one of them was that the technology they use has a real world application now it's unlikely that they'll be able to use the flat 6 in F1 but they could benefit from The Battery Technology from the hybrid powertrain from 2026 onwards the power of the electric motor will increase by three times to nearly 500 horsepower but even then I don't think Porsche need it they already have Formula E in their previous Le Mans cars to draw from in their road cars and they do all Porsche hybrid or full electric powertrains at the moment began life in Le Mans or Formula E the only time I could see the F1 style hybrid system being relevant to Porsche is if they were to make another hype car like the 918 or potentially make the already ridiculous 911 Turbo S even faster and to be honest I really like the idea of a hybrid Turbo S in 1901 Ferdinand Porsche created the first ever hybrid car The Loner Porsche mixed hybrid it had a top speed of 37 miles per hour which broke the Austrian speed record at the time just a few years later he designed the Mercedes-Benz ssk which had a top speed of 120 miles per hour and was arguably the fastest race car of its day and then came the Volkswagen Beetle which had to be fuel efficient cheap able to start in the cold and fit a family of five although this is the formula for most basic cars nowadays in the 1930s this was a seemingly impossible challenge and so the only person that Adolf Hitler could hire for this task was Ferdinand Porsche who was by then one of the most famous engineers in the country but this Porsche is not the one that started the company I'm making a video about that was his son Ferry the first car to Bear the Porsche name was the Porsche 356 and after winning Le Mans in 1951 it became Porsche's Flagship model they sold over 76 000 of these before production ceased in 1965 where it was replaced by the Porsche 911 by the 70s they were selling over 2009 a year and it's many different Generations it's won the Monte Carlo rally the paridakar the target Florio and plenty of endurance races including Le Mans it's very easily the most successful sports car ever made in fact it was so successful that other companies started asking Porsche to engineer their cars for them the Mercedes 500e Opel zafira Renault Clio V6 Subaru Legacy and sea Ibiza are all examples of cards which Porsche helped to engineer no other car company has been asked to do so much work for others and that's because Porsche don't just sell cars they sell engineering if Porsche want to put a hybrid system in the Turbo S then they will they have the technology from their racing Endeavors and they have the engineers to put it into use if they want an excuse to keep putting combustion engines in their car they'll make one and they will sell like crazy Porsche have become so loved as a brand that their fans will scramble to buy any special car they release a lot of Porsches gain value on the secondhand Market because Porsche will stop making them before everyone who wants one and has the money for it gets one they're at an all-time high in terms of both revenue and profit and they look to keep growing naturally Porsche have sold over six and a half thousand race cars in their time and they gain even more revenue from making these race cars close in DNA to the road ones and that I think is the main reason Porsche don't need to race in F1 Formula One is so far removed from normal roadcast there's no point in them entering it wouldn't sell them any more cars because the demand for them is already so high and it wouldn't give them any engineering benefit that they couldn't do themselves they're coming back to Le Mans next year and they continue to follow F1 around with the GT3 cup and that's how I think things will stay Porsche can't leave and won't leave Motorsport but they don't need to join F1 foreign [Music]

Channel: John Warren

Views: 2,345,987

Keywords: f1, formula one, formula 1, f1 2022, f1 2023, f1 explained, f1 updates, grand prix, porsche, porsche 911, volkswagen, porsche history, porsche 911 turbo s, porsche 992, porsche 911 gt3, f1 engines, f1 engine rules, will Porsche join f1, f1 2026, porsche f1, porsche formula one

Id: 1ntR9wOnwsU

Length: 9min 12sec (552 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 17 2022