Progress is the word. The 956/962 was the car to have in the 1980s. While engines varied, they were all some form of Porsche's traditional flat six, with some turbo assistance. Coupled with some advanced ground effect aerodynamics, some first-rate drivers and even an early sequential gearbox, the 962 and its 956 predecessor were untouchable, especially at Le Mans. In 1983 they covered nine of the top ten positions, with only a Sauber BMW in 9th disrupting their dominance (Leading to their “Nobody’s perfect” advertisement). Even after its official retirement it was still winning races as a Dauer. So good was the 956/962 that its final win came in 1994, over 10 years after its launch. That doesn't even cover the cars it spawned, with Jochen Dauer entering a road-legal 962 in the GT1 class for the 1994 Le Mans, winning it outright.

Jump forward to the mid 2010’s and Porsche would return to the top class of prototype racing with the 919. This time, the car would feature only four cylinders, yet thanks to hybrid assistance, would produce 1000bhp to all four wheels. The 919 arrived at the peak of the LMP1 madness when the cars were closer to spaceships and had the pace to trouble contemporary F1 cars. Like the 962 before, the 919 would ensure a clean sweep of Le Mans and the WEC for three years in a row before leaving to focus on Formula e. However, like the Group C machine before it, the story of the 919 did not end with its last official race. To see what the car was truly capable of, they turned it into the 919 Evo, a race car freed from the shackles of regulation. With DRS, side skirts, extra bodywork and an unrestricted hybrid system, Porsche would set out to break lap records “for fun”. This included going faster than an F1 car around Spa (and over 12 seconds faster than the non-evo 919) and finally breaking Stefan Bellof’s Nürburgring lap record, incidentally, set in a 956.