The countdown for the Le Mans 24 Hours is on. At the official pretest on the 13.629km Circuit des 24 Heures, the Porsche Team has entered the critical phase in preparing for the world's toughest automobile race.

The Porsche LMP Team with the two Porsche 919 Hybrids covered 156 laps at the official test day at Le Mans. Besides its six regular LMP1 works drivers - Neel Jani, Andre Lotterer and Nick Tandy in car number 1 and Earl Bamber, Timo Bernhard and Brendon Hartley sharing car number 2 - Marc Lieb also drove on Sunday. The German won last year's Le Mans 24 Hours race together with Jani and Romain Dumas at the wheel of the 919 Hybrid and is joint reigning world champion with them both.

The best 2017 lap time of a Porsche 919 Hybrid at the official Le Mans test was 3:21.512, which means an improvement by seven-tenths of a second compared to the 919's best test lap time in 2016. This was achieved despite restrictions enforced by new regulations concerning the aerodynamics in particular. The Porsche LMP Team refrained from simulating qualifying at the test and finished fourth and fifth quickest behind Toyota after eight hours of testing.