Going full throttle on an e-bike at the Hockenheimring
Laurin Heinrich was born to win. He’s a young man who loves going fast. The up-and-coming race driver takes an e-bike out onto the Fit on Track event at the Hockenheimring and explains why fast is fun, whether it’s in a Taycan or an e-bike
Zero emissions, 100 per cent enjoymentThe Hockenheimring is one of the world’s great race circuits, a track you’d normally associate with top drivers and great racing cars. But you don’t necessarily need a fast car to have fun here. Just ask Laurin Heinrich, an up-and-coming race driver in the Porsche Carrera Cup Germany. Laurin has swapped the Porsche Taycan he has just climbed out of for the Porsche eBike X+ and is whizzing around the track, taking the racing line with customary high speed. But then for this 19-year-old from Würzburg nearly everything in life revolves around speed. It’s the deciding factor between victory and defeat, after all. And whether you make it to the big time… or not. So for Laurin, who had his first racing experience in a kart at just ten years of age and drove his first full season at 14, there’s only one choice of speed when it comes to the e-bike – full speed. Whether it’s a track-ready Porsche 911 or the eBike X+, the grin that breaks out when he accelerates is always the same. And it’s an emotion that’s felt by all Porsche Track Experience participants too. Laurin won the Porsche Super Sports Cup two years ago here at the Hockenheimring“It’s so cool to explore the race track on a bike,” says Laurin, who says he learns a lot from exploring the ‘Ring at a slower pace, experiencing the Grand Prix course from an entirely new perspective. Driving a Porsche is always a proven method of intensifying an experience. With electric mobility, you experience a new dimension in speed and dynamism, whether that’s in the Porsche Taycan or even on two wheels, with a battery under the saddle. “The main thing that fascinates me about e-sport is how different it is. On the one hand you hear almost nothing when you’re on a bike, but on the other hand the power development is simply enormous,” raves Laurin, who is on his way to becoming a professional race driver. “That’s a completely new approach.” Here on the circuit with lots of other amateur athletes, e-sport participation is mostly for fun – far removed from everyday competition and the pressure of training.
I take the racing line on the e-bike too– if only because it’s so engrained in me
Straight out of the pit lane and onto the circuit with the e-bikeA new dimension in racingLaurin is a hybrid race driver – he doesn’t just put his speed to use on the race track. Between races in real life, this aspiring racer also competes for virtual trophies. At the Porsche Esports Carrera Cup Germany ‘Race at Home’ event in June 2020, after 30 minutes of racing against 20 other sim racers – comprising experienced drivers as well as young up-and-coming drivers and amateurs from real-life motorsport – he claimed a double victory in the two-race event. But for all the fascination of the virtual autodrome, a victory in real life is always a little more meaningful for Laurin. “There’s a lot more emotion behind real-life motorsport,” he explains. It’s something that Porsche Track Experience participants, especially those more used to driving virtual race cars perhaps, tell you they feel too. At the Fit on Track event, having fun is the focus for Laurin and other participantsPorsche Track Experience: fast, but especially funSeveral times a year, Hockenheim-Ring GmbH opens up its race track to amateur athletes for its Fit on Track events. The 4.6km Grand Prix course offers inline skaters, cyclists of traditional bikes and handbikes, as well as joggers, the kind of perfect conditions far away from traffic that get their muscles firing. Fit on Track is all about having fun and exploring one of the best-known race tracks in the world. At these events, you don’t have to be the fastest – although there’s nothing stopping you from doing that if you want to. Speed, as Laurin will tell you, is addictive.Several times a year, the Grand Prix course opens its doors to amateur cyclists, runners, handbikers and skaters
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