All top three LMP1-H cars brought upgrades to their challengers, but no one could stop the second generation Porsche 919 in its tracks. The German outfit brought revised front nose cone, lower chassis elements and new side impact structure aerodynamics for the 919. Which left Audi and Toyota in its wake and the lots of head scratching from its personnel.
Porsche
Porsche has been busy over the brake with its new front end, bringing a new more rounded frontal surface which maximizes splitter performance up front. Without the double curvature the new version increases the volume of air introduced under the underfloor; thereby increasing the pressure gradient generated, resulting in more down-force. The headlights have been relocated to the new surface and new baffles try to increase and optimize the pressure differential on the splitter adds. There is a lot of performance to be gained from the splitter, and Porsche did just that.
Also new on the 919 is the new alterations to the lower chassis. Turning vanes play a pivotal role in guiding the airflow up and around the frontal section of the chassis. While the new turning vanes are not very complex, they make a nicely designed cascade unit on the inner section of the car's front wheel.
The cascading vanes help the car in several ways: brake cooling and flow management. Porsche has brought a new configuration for the Nurburgring race, which sees high down-force philosophy injected into the top category racers.
Below the front control arms you can note the new vanes, on the sideways âTâ shape on the central section of the vanes is a new vane on the lower section of it, and this will help brake cooling. The air fill is guided straight into the ducts which cool the brakes. With much demand on brakes around the circuit, this looks to be a way to help control brake temperature (from a performance perspective) rather than help deal with a cooling issue.
Also new to this advanced turning vanes is a new vane placed on the inner section, right by the bulkhead of the 919. This is a much bigger vane and so will help take the tyre wake and vortex away from the under chassis splitter and diffuser (as well as other elements). As a consequence, less turbulence will be carried to the back of the car, so the underfloor elements have a cleaner flow to work with, so therefore more downforce to work with.
Furthermore, Porsche also brought its high downforce side impact structure louvers, which worked to great effect at the Nurburgring. Their high downforce design sees two curved louvres as well as new lower sill elements. By this, Porsche will be attaching the air flow to the chassis, to then be worked hard by the rear wing. The curves in the louvres will keep the flow very close to the chassis, without making it turbulent.
deck configuration. The rear deck sees to inner extensions to the rear wheel pods, with a rear Gurney flap lining them. This is 100% a down-force generator. The extended pods with the gurney will draw low pressure towards it which will be used to push the gurney into the road.
The rear wing upper main plane was also updated come to the 6H. There was a much higher angle of attack to help produce more down-force but with more drag.