Yahoo Autos Neel Jani Explains His Porsche 919 Spa Lap
Neel Jani’s record-setting blast through Spa’s daunting Eau Rouge corner generated five gs of lateral loading on his body and four gs of vertical load that twisted his little frame into a bundle of grunt and sinew.
His untamed Porsche 919 Hybrid, freed from harnesses that kept the Le Mans-winning prototype under strict adherence to FIA WEC rule book, sang through Eau Rouge’s right-left complex at 190mph and cracked the 227mph mark-all while traveling uphill-before braking and blasting across the right-hand apex in Les Combes. And that only accounts for the early portion of his mesmerizing performance at the Belgian circuit.
For one brutal lap, Neel Jani engaged his inner Neil Armstrong as the exploration into racing’s unknown took the WEC world champion to the outer reaches of faith and adhesion.
"As a driver you will have to take risks, and you will have to go to the limit," he said in his delightful Swiss-Indian lilt. "Spa is not a boy’s track."
In his first in-depth interview about the Spa experience, Jani reveals many of the unbelievable numbers attached to the run, and also talks us through his "Lap of the Gods" below.
"It’s the dream of everyone, no?" he said. "The no-boundary car. No limits, what can you do with it? That was the ride on the bullet, basically. It’s man against machine. That’s what it felt like for me. You have to battle the machine."
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