Porsche's magic moments in the WEC

Le Mans, June 2015

No one could have imagined after Porsche won its 16th Le Mans 24 Hours in 1998 that the wait for the 17th would be that number of years. It’s easily explained by its absence from the pinnacle of sportscar racing, but the German manufacturer made amends at the second time of asking on its return. Porsche hadn’t been a true contender in year one of its 919 Hybrid LMP1 contender in 2014, but 12 months later it had the measure of nearest rival Audi as well as Toyota.

Porsche’s speed at night was the key to victory — for both Porsche and the winning 919 crewed by Nick Tandy, Nico Hulkenberg and Earl Bamber. The extra entry fielded by the in-house Porsche factory team for Le Mans had the legs of both Audi’s R18 e-tron quattro and the sister car driven by Mark Webber, Timo Bernhard and Brendon Hartley during the cooler temperatures of the night. Hulkenberg, Tandy and Bamber established themselves in the lead during the hours of darkness and went on to claim victory by a lap from Webber and co.

“The track came to us when the temperatures came down at dusk,” said Tandy. “It was all about doing four stints on the tyres and we were able to keep a good pace throughout. That was the key to our victory.”

Porsche dominated in Qatar to take a maiden WEC win with the 963

Photo by: Shameem Fahath

Qatar, March 2024

The Porsche 963 was already a winner over in the IMSA SportsCar Championship, but the LMDh had yet to secure a victory in the World Endurance Championship by the time it kicked off its second campaign in the series at the inaugural the Qatar 1812Km. There had been flashes of form the previous year, most notably at Fuji in September with a run to second, but Porsche hit the ground running in the Middle East.

A 963, either a Porsche Penske Motorsport car or a privateer Jota example, led the way in each of the four sessions of the pre-event prologue test, while the factory topped free practice two times out of three and claimed the pole. Come the race, PPM had things pretty much its own way: race winners Kevin Estre, Laurens Vanthoor and Andre Lotterer were never headed from the second hour on the way to a first win for an LMDh, the only hiccup coming just minutes before the finish when the team was instructed to affix a new race number to the car after it sustained body damage.

Porsche blocked out the podium: the best of the Jota cars with Will Stevens, Callum Ilott and Norman Nato driving and the second PPM example shared by Matt Campbell, Frederic Makowiecki and Michael Christensen took home the remaining silverware. The first non-Porsche was a lap down.

“Fuji the previous year had provided an indication of what the team was capable of,” recalls PPM managing director Jonathan Diuguid. “Qatar was the execution of that. You don’t have final validation of that until you end up in Victory Lane.”

Three second places, another win and a pair of top-six finishes for Estre, Vanthoor and Lotterer meant the title was as good as won by the time the WEC circus arrived in Bahrain for the series finale. Porsche duly added another ‘new’ WEC title to the six won with the 919.

Estre produced one of the laps of the season to claim pole at the 2024 Le Mans 24 Hours

Photo by: Nikolaz Godet

Le Mans, June 2024

The 963 wasn’t the fastest car in Hypercar at Le Mans in 2024. Except, that is, when Kevin Estre pulled out all the stops with a phenomenal lap to claim pole position in the Hyperpole session. It was all the more impressive because he’d only squeaked through to the Thursday night shoot-out.

Estre was languishing down the order when a red flag interrupted the final half hour of qualifying. Time was running out for another pole shot, which explains why PPM opted not to give him the second set of Michelin tyres allowed. His next run, interrupted by traffic, was good enough only for the fourth row, though he crossed the line before the chequered flag fell. That meant time – and just about enough fuel – for one more push.

There were no purple sectors on the lap that followed, but a series of greens signifying a personal best each time for the Frenchman. It backed up Porsche’s lack of outright pace, but also showed that Estre got absolutely everything out of his 963 around the Circuit de la Sarthe that evening.

“I pretty much maximised everything; maybe there were one or two micro-sectors where I had gone faster before,” recalls Estre. “Looking back on the lap, I don’t think I could have done much better.”

The Porsche 919's maiden WEC victory came at the 2014 finale in Brazil

Photo by: Porsche AG

Interlagos, November 2014

Porsche had shown flashes of form with the 919 early in the car’s maiden season. A podium on debut at Silverstone and pole at Spa were among them. But after Le Mans the car started to show promise: it finished 2-3 in the penultimate round in Bahrain. Everything then came together for a first victory in a thrilling finale at Interlagos.

Neel Jani, Marc Lieb and Romain Dumas triumphed ahead of the best of the Toyotas, getting a helping hand from the sister car when Webber crashed heavily at the flat-out uphill Turn 14 left-hander. The safety car was called, and the time taken for the clear-up meant the race never went green.

Porsche had opted against giving Jani new tyres at his final stop in the knowledge that the chasing Toyota TS040 HYBRID with Anthony Davidson at the wheel would need less fuel at its final stop 10 minutes later. An advantage of a second and a half for Jani turned into 17s, his lead standing at 14s 10 minutes later when the safety car was called with half an hour to go.

The management from both manufacturers were convinced they would have won in a straight fight. Jani, for his part, just says: “It would have been tight.”

The second iteration of the 919 made Porsche the dominant force in the WEC

Photo by: Porsche AG

Weissach, December 2014

Porsche might have made it to Victory Lane with the 919 at the last time of asking in year one, but what was effectively an all-new car was already on the way. When the drivers got to sample it for the first time, they knew they’d been given a weapon for season two.

The second iteration of the 919 was a complete redesign. Alex Hitzinger, the original technical director on the 919, reckoned the team he’d put together for the project couldn’t be expected “to correctly optimise our first design shot”. That explains why there was just 10 or so percent carryover from the original – even the monocoque was new. The jump, recalls Neel Jani, was huge.

Even before the car reached the race circuit proper, it was clear that a car that now had eight rather than six megajoule of hybrid punch was something special. “Marc [Lieb] and I did more than 1000km in the rain at Weissach in December to test all the systems, and it gave us a magic feeling straight away,” recalls Bernhard. “I remember thinking – this car is good.”

So good that Porsche found nearly four seconds around Paul Ricard, then home to the pre-season prologue test. Come Le Mans, the 919 was five and half seconds quicker than before, Jani setting a new qualifying record on the way to pole.

Post-Le Mans victory number one for the 919, the car got even better. Porsche focused on its preparations for the 24 Hours over the opening races of the 2015 season, all the while honing its high-downforce package – ‘kit 5’, it was called – for the second leg of the series starting at the Nurburgring.

“The new aero gave us so much downforce that we started to feel our neck muscles again,” recalls Jani. “It was like driving a Formula 1 car.”

So good was the mk2 919 that it swept to victory in each of the remaining five WEC races. The drivers’ and manufacturers’ titles were the inevitable result.

The #2 Porsche came back from an MGU change to storm to victory ahead of the LMP2 runners

Photo by: Getty Images

Le Mans, June 2017

Porsche was bidding for a hat-trick of hat-tricks with the 919 in what turned out to be the final year for the car in ’17. It had claimed Le Mans victory and both WEC titles in each of the previous two seasons, but there was one bit of silverware it really wanted – and wanted to keep! “Le Mans was the main target that year because then we could put the trophy in the Porsche museum,” remembers Bernhard.

Yet the three in a row the German manufacturer needed to be able to retain the trophy didn’t look likely with just under four hours to go. The 919 driven by Tandy, Lotterer and Neel Jani that had led the race for the previous 10 hours slowed and then ground to a halt on the Mulsanne Straight with engine failure. The other factory Porsche was down in sixth and nearly three laps off the lead.

The eventual victory for the car shared by Bernhard, Hartley and Bamber came against the odds after it had lost 65 minutes in the pits changing the motor generator unit (MGU) as early as the fourth hour. The initial goal for the car was to make it ahead of all LMP2 machinery, which turned out to be a pertinent ambition: when the sister car retired it promoted one of the secondary class prototypes into the lead.

Early simulations when Hartley left the pits in the repaired car in hour five were that the Porsche would catch the fastest P2s right at the end of the race.

“When Brendon came on the radio and said the car was good, Andreas Seidl [team principal] told us we could go hunting, that it should be maximum attack and if something happens, well it happens,” recalls Bernhard. “I remember seeing Earl, two wheels on the dirt, coming up to three cars abreast on the Mulsanne Straight and passing them in one go. It was a miracle none of us crashed.”

The predictions of the tight finish proved unduly pessimistic. Bernhard took the lead from the P2-winning Jota-run Jackie Chan DC Racing ORECA-Gibson 07 late in the 23rd hour. An amazing comeback was complete and the Le Mans trophy now has pride of place in the Porsche museum in Stuttgart.

Despite a near-flawless race in 2025, Porsche wasn't to experience a Le Mans 24 Hours victory with the 963

Photo by: Marc Fleury

Le Mans, June 2025

Porsche fell just short of that elusive 20th overall victory at Le Mans this year: the PPM car shared by Estre, Vanthoor and Campbell was a tad over 14s in arrears of the winning Ferrari after 24 hours of racing. The 963, at its best in the hotter conditions of the afternoon, looked a genuine contender in the final exchanges, though Robert Kubica in the winning Ferrari had enough in hand to compete a hat-trick for the Prancing Horse.

Yet over the full course of the race, the Porsche wasn’t a match for the Italian manufacturer’s 499P Le Mans Hypercar. That Estre and co were so close at the chequered flag owed much to the near-perfect race they enjoyed – their only delay came with an early puncture. The Ferraris – the victorious yellow AF Corse satellite entry and the blood red factory cars – had what might be described as messy races. “I’m not pretending we were in contention to win,” said Estre in the aftermath. “It looks close on paper, but that’s because they made a lot of mistakes.”

It was a pivotal moment in the Porsche WEC story. When one of its factory programmes had to go in the face of falling road car sales, it was the world championship that got the chop. It has yet to explain exactly why, but Porsche Motorsport boss Thomas Laudenbach admitted that there were what he called “sporting considerations”. By that he meant the Balance of Performance – he just couldn’t say it.

If the BoP had done its job, Porsche would have won, contends Laudenbach. He uses the word “hurt” when describing its failure to do so.

The sun sets on Porsche's time in the top class in the WEC

Photo by: Marc Fleury