Porsche continues in World Endurance Championship GTE Pro for 2015

The German manufacturer announced its intention to continue with the Manthey-run team for a third season during Saturday evening's Night of Champion awards ceremony, after making the decision in the week leading up to the Interlagos WEC finale at the end of November.

Frank-Steffen Walliser, who is in charge of Porsche's GT motorsport division, said: "The WEC is a strategically important championship to Porsche and it is important that we support it with a GTE programme as well as racing in LMP1."

Walliser still believes Porsche can be competitive with the 991-shape 911 RSR in 2015 after a season in which the car was more often than not outpaced by the Ferrari 458 Italia and the Aston Martin Vantage GTE.

"That will depend on some adjustments to the Balance of Performance that we think will come and a continuation of the progress that we made in 2014 in doing our homework on tyres, set-up and driver line-ups," he explained.

Porsche has tweaked its driver line-up for its GTE Pro assault next year: Dane Michael Christensen has swapped places with Jorg Bergmeister, who has moved over to the Tudor United SportsCar Championship squad, and will race alongside Richard Lietz.

Frenchmen Frederic Makowiecki and Patrick Pilet will continue as partners in the team's other car.

There has been no decision on the third drivers for the Le Mans 24 Hours: either Makowiecki and Christensen or both would be unavailable for the WEC blue-riband event and the Spa round in May should they land a seat in Porsche's third 919 Hybrid LMP1.

Marco Holzer, who was dropped from the Manthey WEC line-up ahead of the Austin round in September, has not been retained by Porsche.