Both Laps Are Real: F1 Chases Porsche Cup #F1 #Zandvoort #DutchGP #IndyCar #Supercars #PorscheCup

An F1 car and a Porsche 911 GT3 Cup car run Zandvoort until one is lapped — and both of those laps are measured, not modelled. The Supercup is a Formula 1 support race and has run this circuit.

The maths is simple once you have the two lap times. The faster car gains the difference between them every lap, so the number of laps it needs to gain a whole lap is the slower car’s lap time divided by that difference — 98.059 divided by 29.397. What makes it worth watching is that the answer is a small number, and small numbers are the ones people argue about.

How we worked it out. The Formula 1 lap is Oscar Piastri’s 1:08.662 pole for the 2025 Dutch Grand Prix, and it is real. The Porsche needed no modelling at all. The Porsche Mobil 1 Supercup is a Formula 1 support race and has actually run at Zandvoort: Morris Schuring’s fastest race lap there in 2023 was a measured 1:38.059.

The honest caveat: both lap times here are measured, so the only modelled thing in the piece is the SHAPE of the lap — where each car is quick and where it is slow — solved on the real circuit geometry with each category’s own grip and power envelope. Nothing in that envelope was tuned to make a Zandvoort number come out, and on the Porsche, whose Zandvoort lap is measured and was never fitted, the model lands within 0.3 per cent.

Source: 2025 Dutch Grand Prix qualifying (Formula 1); Porsche Mobil 1 Supercup, Zandvoort 2023; circuit geometry from the OpenStreetMap-derived track atlas, rebuilt to 4,244 m against an official 4,259 m

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