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06 Jan 2023

Porsche returns to the top league of endurance

The new 963 LMDh car takes Porsche Penske Motorsport to eight nations on three continents in 2023  

With the LMDh program, Porsche is returning to the top league of these championships to battle it out again for overall wins. The spectacular race car with a system output of around 500 kW (680 PS) will make its debut at 24 Hours of Daytona in January 2023.
 
The competition is fierce, as Acura, BMW, and Cadillac have also developed LMDh race cars for the new prototype class of the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship. The abbreviation LMDh stands for Le Mans Daytona hybrid. The group of Le Mans Hypercars (LMHs), which includes Ferrari, Glickenhaus, Peugeot, and Toyota, will also compete in the FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC).
 
Twin-turbo V8
The LMDh regulations do not restrict displacement, design, or the number of cylinders in the internal combustion engine. Laudenbach and his engineers chose an old, familiar engine to be the basis for Porsche’s return to the top class. “The dry sump lubrication was already designed for high lateral acceleration in the 918. If you consider the degree of freedom in the regulations – for example, when it comes to minimum weight and performance – this 4.6-liter engine offers an outstanding basis for an LMDh drive.”
 
What it all comes down to
The framework of rigid rules made development all the more difficult. Fulfilling them is one thing, and ensuring reliability is another – and a basic requirement for success. To outperform its competitors, Porsche Penske Motorsport focused on other key development attributes. “Some of the most important elements in the vehicle specifications were perfect balance and drivability in all conditions, whether with a full or empty tank, with new or used tires,” Laudenbach explains. “We don’t need a ‘top’ car. It just needs to be consistently fast because that’s what allows you to win races and championships in series with BoP. In addition, ease of use for the driver – especially in changing weather conditions – and outstanding serviceability for the Porsche Penske Motorsport pit crew were important to us.”
 
Mannheim is home to one of the world’s 20 Penske Porsche Centers and, more recently, the second LMDh factory team, for which Roger Penske invested in a complex structure and created state-of-the-art furnishings. Porsche covers the costs for all of the mobile equipment and the crew. Forty-five experts are preparing two Porsche 963s here for the FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC). And there are just as many employees on the Porsche Penske Motorsport team for the IMSA campaigns in Mooresville.


 
A management team of four
A management team of four ensures that just about everything runs synchronously at both locations. As director of LMDh Factory Motorsport, Urs Kuratle oversees everything on behalf of Porsche Motorsport. Jonathan Diuguid is managing director of Porsche Penske Motorsport, Travis Law is competition director for all locations, and Christian Eifrig is technical project manager. Under the management of these four, Mooresville and Mannheim have parallel structures, each with a team manager and head mechanic, two vehicle heads, racing engineers, and mechanics. All of the network threads come together at the Porsche Development Center in Weissach, which in turn is responsible for distributing information.


 
Streamlined structure
The 963 is a highly complex hybrid race car, and the customers are top international teams who have what it takes. Established companies with their own technical directors, engineers, and mechanics, sponsorship and marketing departments, top drivers, and their own simulators.
 
A 963 costs around 2.5 million euros, plus operating costs of around eight to ten million euros a season. These investments need to pay off, and the only currency is success. “These teams fight it out for overall wins just like the factory cars,” explains Kuratle. “That’s their objective. That’s what they owe their sponsors – and we want to make that possible for them.”
 
In addition to the two factory cars in the IMSA and the WEC, the first customer vehicles will also compete in the 2023 debut season. Expanding Porsche’s tradition of customer racing into this league is a great achievement, as anyone who purchases a Porsche receives extensive literature, user manuals, and catalogs, and needs to be able to order spare parts. Kuratle manages that with his team of five and with specialists in different areas of development.
 
Months before homologation, which refers to the 963’s official competition approval, JDC-Miller MotorSports (USA) and Jota (UK) were the first two customer teams to purchase a new prototype for IMSA and WEC campaigns. For the 2024 season, Porsche plans to double the number of customer vehicles in both racing series from two to four. There’s no shortage of requests, as the brand enjoys a high level of trust.
 
The team in action
Eleven races in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship and seven endurance races in the FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC): the tournament with the new Porsche 963 LMDh car takes Porsche Penske Motorsport to eight nations on three continents from January to November.
 
Find the full race calendar by clicking here.
 

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