14 June 2015, Le Mans, Republic of France

Porsche had the best LMP1 car and driver package for the 24 Hours of Le Mans 2015 with both pace and reliability; attributes that are in common with Chopard Superfast watches. The Porsche Team, including Chopard Ambassadors Mark Webber and Romain Dumas, shaved an amazing 5 seconds of the lap record to qualify in a starting P1-2-3 grid lockout. The 1st and 2nd place finish on the winning podium was the record breaking 17th Overall Win at Le Mans for Porsche that is now poised to develop the Future Sportscar. With this ebullient and historic comeback to endurance racing, Porsche has declared: "Challenge Accepted!"

The weather gods smiled benignly upon the 250,000 spectators in Sarthe for this year's '24 Hours of  Le Mans' - the highlight of the Sportscar World Endurance Championship season. For the most part, the sun shone upon the 13 km road circuit twisting through the Loire fields and forest. Some gentle spits of rain created a frisson of uncertainty a few hours from the end of the race but did not really affect the results.

Porsche Motorsport fielded three Porsche 919 Hybrid cars for the race and just for the '24 Hours of Le Mans', they were individual painted red (No.17), black (No.18) and white (No.19). Chopard Ambassadors Mark Webber and Romain Dumas led the red and black cars respectively whilst the 'new boy', Nico Hülkenberg was in the white car.

The black No.18 Porsche 919 Hybrid was favourite and fastest in qualifying and led the race to the glorious symphony of 55 hot engines.  The No.18 Porsche suffered two 'incidents' at Mulsanne, with both Romain Dumas and Neel Jani understeering straight on, skidding across the gravel and hitting the wall just a few hours apart. On both occasions the car was recovered and kept going but their race for the podium was lost, eventually finishing 5th. As 5-times Le Mans winner, Derek Bell, noted, "If you have to stop during the race for reasons other than fuel and tyres, you're not going to win."

The red No.17 Porsche 919 Hybrid proved the adage when it had to stop for a penalty. Mark Webber, Brendon Hartley and Timo Bernhard were in the melée for the lead on Saturday evening, but their car fell back dropped away when they served a one-minute stop-go penalty for Hartley going too fast in a 'slow zone' earlier in the race.

Webber believes the penalty did not affect the final results with the winning No.19 car of Nico Hülkenberg, Nick Tandy and Earl Bamber. "It doesn't help to lose half a lap, but I don't think it was going to make a difference to the victory - the No.19 deserved it," said Webber after the race. "They were exceptional, especially in the night. They left the Audis and the rest of the Porsches behind."   The No.17 car finished a lap down from the winner to complete a famous 1-2 finish for Porsche.

The drivers of the winning No.19 Porsche 919 Hybrid did not put a foot wrong and their car was reliable. In the cool of the night, both the tyres and turbocharger benefitted and they built an unassailable lead that kept until the end for the record-breaking 17th overall win at Le Mans for Porsche.