Video: Porsche’s new LMDh car’s V8 sounds mighty
The World Endurance Championship and the Le Mans 24 Hours are both in something of a holding pattern at the moment. There are new rules in the pipeline for LMDh cars, but more importantly Porsche, BMW, Ferrari, Peugeot, Acura and Cadillac are all just about to join, but not quite there yet.
That’s left Toyota as pretty much the only realistic winners for the last few seasons. Glickenhaus has put up a valiant charge but BoP hasn’t been truly kind to the American team yet and Alpine’s multiple-year-old LMP1 Oreca chassis is hampered by its age. So, we are sort of just waiting for the good times to roll in next year and hoping for good news.
So here is some good news! Porsche’s as-yet unnamed new LMDh car is running at Spa, and it sounds GREAT! We knew the new Le Mans machine from Stuttgart was to be powered by a twin-turbocharged V8, but having heard sportscar racing’s gradual move to quieter and quieter engines over the last decade, we weren’t expecting anything sonorous.
Thankfully, it seems we were wrong. Really quite, quite wrong. Yes it’s true that this is a private testing session and the Porsche LMDh car has the circuit to itself with no other car sounds to drown it out, but the fact that you can still hear that V8 rumbling when the car is well down the Kemmel Straight and the camera is at La Source can only be good.
The car might, we hope, make its racing debut later this year, with the WEC offering to allow LMDh cars a go at racing earlier than their 2023 IMSA debut, at which point we’ll be able to verify how good it sounds. But until then, we can just hope our ears and this video are correct.
Welcome to Goodwood Elevenses, a mid-morning helping of motoring-related amusement to help break up your day. Watch the last video: Throwing a Ferrari 488 GT Modificata around COTA
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