How Porsche and Penske are gearing up for sportscar racing's bold new era

Later this month, Porsche returns to top-level prototype racing in the Daytona 24 Hours. It’s not even six years since it last won the Le Mans 24 Hours for a record 19th time, although Toyota’s dominance since then makes it feel longer, and Porsche’s all-new 963 is a very different animal from the 919 Hybrid that went before.

Despite the 919’s technical prowess and impressive success – three FIA World Endurance Championship titles and a trio of Le Mans triumphs in just four seasons – what it couldn’t boast was longevity. Here’s where 963 should win big; in many ways it’s more of a successor to the iconic 962 of the 1980s: it has been designed with the long haul in mind.

The 962, derived from the 956 Group C design, was primarily engineered to fit the IMSA GTP rules from 1984, and went on to enjoy roaring success for a decade on both sides of the Atlantic. Not only did the factory team taste milk and honey, but 75 cars were sold to customers, making it a commercial smash hit too. The 962 won multiple championships around the world, and scooped all the classics at Le Mans, Daytona and Sebring numerous times.

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And so history repeats: 963 is built to ‘American’ LMDh rules for IMSA’s top GTP category (using a next-generation LMP2 chassis and a common hybrid system) rather than ‘European’ Hypercar regulations (which are far more bespoke). Customer cars have been sold to privateer teams, and it will race immediately in both IMSA and the FIA World Endurance Championship, giving Porsche a shot once again at all of those classic long-distance events in 2023. This was a clear priority that steered its path along this route.

“It’s a very important project for us,” confirms Porsche’s Head of Motorsport Thomas Laudenbach. “I couldn’t imagine the brand of Porsche without motorsport. We’ve got a great history in endurance racing – at Le Mans and in America. We call it our ‘living room’, so therefore coming back to the top class and fighting for overall victories has special meaning for us.

“We’ve chosen the 963 name on purpose, because combining a customer programme at the top level is also really something very special.”

The 963 has a huge legacy to live up to, after the success of the 962 Group C car during the 1980s

Photo by: William Murenbeeld / Motorsport Images

From a technical standpoint, 963 has an inferiority complex to 919. It’s less powerful than its tech-packed, four-wheel-drive predecessor, this despite running a twin-turbo V8 to rival that ingenious V4. The hybrid is weaker too, but that is a price that needs paying for a sustainable future, believes Laudenbach.

“If we talk about 919, there was a lot more technological freedom, you could choose any concept, you did everything on your own,” he says. “But we also know that the financial sustainability was difficult.

“Coming to LMDh, talking as an engineer, you always want the biggest freedom you can have. At the same time, I’m the head of Porsche Motorsport – I have to look at budgets! It needs to be affordable, so it’s a trade-off between technological freedom and cost control. We’ve found a way to do top-level endurance racing again with sensible budgets.

“We should run it like this for a few years, and tune it left or right with experience. I’m not saying it’s perfect, but let’s see how it works now and go from there.”

"Once the other OEMs caught up and ran with their cars, we had more data for the process, then we had more running time. When we were alone on the road, we were very much alone!" Urs Kuratle

Five years ago, Roger Penske told Autosport that he’d love to return to Le Mans with a manufacturer, and revealed that he’d even approached Audi about taking over the LMP1 project after its shock withdrawal from the WEC. Laudenbach has a history with the American motorsport legend’s team, so their renewed partnership as its factory team is no surprise.

“I have great memories working with the Penske organisation on the LMP2,” Laudenbach says of the American Le Mans Series RS Spyder, which famously won the 2008 Sebring 12 Hours outright. “At that time I was responsible for the powertrain, which was a demanding but successful project. Take Porsche and Team Penske, partnering again for something like this, I think that’s great.

“We are not there to fill up the grid; we have a clear vision of winning races. And I think that works in conjunction with the attitude of Team Penske.”

Porsche Penske Motorsport has a ‘one team, two bases’ approach – using Penske’s US HQ at Mooresville in North Carolina for IMSA and a European outpost in Mannheim, Germany for WEC – coupled with Porsche’s own motorsport headquarters at Weissach.

The 963 brings back the Penske and Porsche partnership that yielded great success with the RS Spyder LMP2 programme

Photo by: Porsche

Porsche LMDh chief Urs Kuratle, a veteran of the 919 project, has been masterminding the 963’s gestation. Not only that, but he played the role of troubleshooter for LMDh’s common hybrid, which comprises a motor generator unit from Bosch, a Williams Advanced Engineering battery and Xtrac gearbox. It’s fair to say that the integration of those systems took some time to navigate…

Insight: Inside the spec hybrid spine of LMDh cars

“The roadblocks we faced were basically the new technology for our new partners, so I would say we were the snowplough for many of the problems,” Kuratle says with a slightly pained expression at the memory. “Once the other OEMs caught up and ran with their cars, we had more data for the process, then we had more running time. When we were alone on the road, we were very much alone!”

Problems with the MGU in particular needed addressing, which led to “headaches” last summer and those, combined with global supply chain issues, are why you won’t be seeing any customer 963s on track until the end of April. But surely the idea behind a less-powerful common hybrid is that it should be easier to remedy when compared to the vast complexity of the 919. Apparently not…

“With the 919, everything was in-house and that made life much easier,” Kuratle explains. “Now, we have encountered a lot of issues or questions that are not in our hands. Yes, the hybrid power of the 919 was much bigger, so it was more complex, but at the end of the day you can say the effort for both has been quite comparable. The difficulties we encountered have just been in a different area, let’s put it this way.”

Porsche’s big-budget 919 programme required almost 250 staff, but Kuratle says it’s tricky to compare this project given its different scale across two championships, as well as the hybrid partners. He adds: “It’s difficult to say with the Porsche Penske Motorsport team in two facilities, the development people in Weissach and then all these people working at Bosch, Williams and Xtrac – for the development of the standard components – so, all in all, it might be an even bigger number of people than LMP1 required.

“But they’re not serving only one team. They’re serving four OEMs and the customer teams. Once these standard components are up and running, and capable of the mileage that they’re supposed to do, then that number of people working on them will reduce.”

From the Penske side, it has placed a long-time trusted lieutenant, Jonathan Diuguid, as point man. A former engineer of Helio Castroneves on the IndyCar side, Diuguid masterminded Penske’s title-winning IMSA DPi project with Acura, as well as working on the RS Spyder programme. He too has been wrangling with the reliability of this hybrid system and explains the nitty-gritty of making these new cars run.

Kuratle has headed up the troubleshooting on the hybrid system

Photo by: Porsche Motorsport

“The integration of the components is such that if anything in the hybrid system fails or doesn’t function then the car shuts down because it doesn’t have redundancy built in,” he explains. “It’s solely reliant on the hybrid system to start, move and generate.

“Other cars in motorsport have alternators to generate power, so when we have these failures, it’s not like we can flip a switch and push-start the car. It’s a critical component, so that was the biggest thing that led to the start/stopping of the test programme. The ultimate goal is to get the technology working properly, to have an efficient drivetrain and packaging.

“At Daytona, I don’t think it’s the fastest car that will win, it will be the team that executes the best with a reliable car.”

"We know how tough the competition is. Of course, everybody will want to win this one. We know with these rules you cannot gain a huge technological advantage over the others, with the Balance of Performance, and we’ve accepted that" Thomas Laudenbach

Diuguid is an advocate of what the rulemakers have set out to achieve, and believes the manufacturers will be rewarded with bangs for their hybrid bucks.

“The bottom line is that hybrid race cars are extremely complicated,” he points out. “They take a long time, and a lot of effort, to develop. LMDh does a great job from that standpoint, from the aerodynamic design to branding and whichever form of engine you want to bring, and the series takes a lot of time to give some guarantees on parity of budget and performance, so it’s not a spending race where the only people who win are the ones who spend the most.

“In the next couple of years, I think we’ll have a really strong class of top-level manufacturers racing in prototypes across both championships. On top of that, there’s an efficient model from a budgetary standpoint to be able to contest those legendary races at Daytona, Le Mans and Sebring.”

Daytona is a brutal way to start the season, with a journey twice around the clock soon followed by another 12 hours at Sebring in March. Three months later, and it’s the centenary Le Mans 24 Hours – a race that Roger Penske started as a driver from pole 60 years ago in a Ferrari!

The new breed of hybrid LMDh cars are far more complex than the DPi machines that preceded them

Photo by: Porsche

“It’s his big dream, this is the last one he really wants to win,” says Laudenbach. “We have great respect, when you sit together with Roger he’s still so passionate, he’s pushing so hard. There is nothing he wants more than to win Le Mans.

“It’s great working with him again, he’s got a long history with our brand. And when he’s talking about the old stories about Le Mans, when the track was lined with trees painted white to see them at night, that’s incredible. He’s an impressive person, and there’s a reason why he’s so successful in business and in motorsport.”

So what are your chances together of winning there in June?

“You sound like my bosses!” he quips in reply. “But they didn’t ask a question, they said, ‘We expect you to win!’ I’m kidding. Of course, it’s 100 years of Le Mans, it’s 75 years of Porsche sportscars, it’s 60 years of 911 and our next overall win would be 20, which would be a sweet one.

“Everything would fit, but at the same time we know how tough the competition is. Of course, everybody will want to win this one. We know with these rules you cannot gain a huge technological advantage over the others, with the Balance of Performance, and we’ve accepted that. There is still enough room to make the difference, still enough room to show the others that you are slightly better.

“What we will not see is three or four years in a row the same brand winning – at least that’s what I don’t expect. There would be nothing better than winning Le Mans this year, and we’ll do everything we can. But I’m long enough in the business to know how tough that is.

“You have to get every little piece right, there isn’t even room for a slight mistake. We will try to be right there in Le Mans, but the first step is to do well at Daytona.”

The Daytona 24 Hours will be a stern test of the 963 as it makes its competition debut

Photo by: Porsche

In the hotseat of the 963

So what is Porsche’s 963 like to drive? Ex-Formula 1 racer Felipe Nasr has been testing the car “since it was being born” and racked up thousands of miles since – from the snowy rollout at Weissach through the blazing-hot summer at Monza and Motorland Aragon, and even downpours at Sebring during hurricane season.
“It feels different to the DPi with the hybrid on the car; there are definitely some driving differences in terms of the style,” Nasr reports. “When we press the brake pedal we don’t just have the mechanical system, we have the e-motor also helping us slow down the car. You stamp the brake, you expect the stopping power straight away – this is no different, but the feeling through the pedal is. I think we all had to go through a process of learning that, but it’s fun. The car looks good and it drives good.

“There’s a lot more power than a DPi, the only downside I’d say is the weight – a bit heavier [by about 100kg] than they used to be. You feel that in corner speeds, and the energy we put through the tyres is a lot higher than before.

"It’s a very different way to make the lap time because the cars have grown in size, grown in weight, grown in power and massively grown in complexity" Dane Cameron

“And stint lengths will be longer, so more driving time for us – so maybe we won’t be driving flat-out for 35 to 40 minutes, now we’ll have to look after the car and tyres for about 50 to 60 minutes. That’s a good addition of time, I think the drivers will feel it!”

His team-mate, two-time IMSA prototype champion Dane Cameron, adds of the development process: “Your tuning effort is more with the boys on the laptops, as opposed to the aero guys like before. It’s a very different way to make the lap time because the cars have grown in size, grown in weight, grown in power and massively grown in complexity.

“Everyone is still learning, these test days come and go – some are smooth, some are plagued with technical stuff. But that gets better as we go. Everyone is hoping for a smooth day in Daytona at the end of this month.”

Cameron and Nasr have been involved in testing the 963 for most of last year

Photo by: Juergen Tap / Porsche