In a daring and frankly heroic maneuver, Porsche has decided to run their 919 Evo — an LMP1 spec racer, only completely unrestricted — around the ‘ring. This has made the internet very excited as anytime Porsche does anything, the internet gets very excited. The reason for such a running and subsequent excitement is to “smash” the lap record at the venerable track that was set in 1983 by a different Porsche. If you can’t tell from the tone so far, I am not very excited about this. I find the pursuit of an unofficial track record, undertaken by one of the fastest purpose-built race cars ever, under very specific conditions nonetheless — to be utterly pointless.
…anytime Porsche does anything, the internet gets very excited.
Yes, there is something visceral and animalistic about watching machines go very, very fast. It stirs emotion and makes you wonder what else might be possible, if only we were dumb enough to try it. Which is wonderful. But this… feels different. It’s sort of like selecting a brown Crayola from your crayon quiver and getting excited when the color applied to your Little Mermaid color-by-numbers coloring book, is indeed brown. It’s a foregone conclusion, and that isn’t very exciting at all. What if Porsche — after taking great care not to let on they were attempting this epic record attempt, by closing the public track and posting a video on social media — fails to break the thirty-five-year-old record? What if their modern, unrestricted specialty car that isn’t competing against anything but time itself, cannot be bothered to go faster than a 1983 956 C?
I still wouldn’t be that interested. And after a collective shrug, I suspect that the rest of the internet wouldn’t either. Except maybe Ferrari fans. They’ll love that.
Feel free to @ me.
three in 7 