Porsche Penske Motorsport may modify its plan to run simply two drivers within the common six-hour World Endurance Championship races subsequent yr.
The workforce will go into its 2025 WEC marketing campaign with a “versatile strategy” after opting to downsize from three to 2 drivers in every of the manufacturing facility Porsche 963 LMDhs, PPM managing director Jonathan Diuguid has revealed to Motorsport.com.
That might contain the WEC squad drafting in drivers from its IMSA SportsCar Championship operation if it feels {that a} three-driver roster is smart for sure tracks.
Mathieu Jaminet and Matt Campbell are scheduled to bolster the common WEC crews for the Le Mans 24 Hours centrepiece spherical of the collection in addition to the 10- and eight-hour races in Qatar and Bahrain that bookend the season.
They may respectively be part of Michael Christensen and Julien Andlauer within the #5 963 and Laurens Vanthoor and Kevin Estre in #6.
“We’ve got important flexibility how we strategy the season,” explains Diuguid.
“There is just one battle, which is Spa [and Laguna Seca in May], and outdoors of that if we expect it was the unsuitable resolution for tracks A, B or C, we are able to return to 3 drivers fairly simply.”
Race winner #6 Porsche Penske Motorsport Porsche 963: Kevin Estre, Andre Lotterer, Laurens Vanthoor
Picture by: JEP / Motorsport Photographs
Diuguid pointed to the Austin spherical in September as a possible race at which bringing in a 3rd driver is a risk due to probably sizzling situations.
He defined that Penske’s “one-team” strategy throughout the WEC and IMSA provides it this flexibility and was additionally a key think about its resolution to go to 2 drivers for 5 of the eight WEC rounds subsequent yr.
For that cause Diuguid believes that PPM won’t be compromised at Le Mans, in addition to at Qatar and Bahrain, when a 3rd driver is added.
“An enormous a part of our resolution is that we’re one world operation,” mentioned Diuguid.
“All of our drivers know all the engineers and processes, and the automobiles and tyres are the very same except for just a few small aero variations [resulting from the different windtunnels used for homologation in the two series].
“It isn’t as if we’re taking somebody from an LMP2 and placing them within the automobile — will probably be somebody who’s used to racing the 963.”
Diuguid steered that PPM wouldn’t have opted for line-ups of simply two everlasting drivers if this selection wasn’t accessible to it.
“If PPM was solely racing within the WEC I don’t assume we might have taken this resolution; getting in with solely two drivers per automobile would in all probability not have been the precise factor to do as a result of you would need to deliver somebody in for Qatar, Le Mans and Bahrain and get them up to the mark,” he mentioned.
“However as a result of we’re racing in IMSA that isn’t an issue.”
Diuguid defined that operating simply two drivers gives an incremental acquire “because the WEC will get tighter and tighter”.
“We expect there’s a acquire to be made as a result of there may be all the time a set-up compromise with three drivers,” he defined.
“Now we’ll solely should have two drivers run by our long-run tyre plan to grasp the degradation profiles.
“We can put together for the race lots higher with the knowledge we’ve.”
Porsche has adopted the lead set by the Ganassi Cadillac workforce, which fielded Earl Bamber and Alex Lynn as a duo in its single V-Collection.R for the shorter WEC races this yr.
There was a transfer led by BMW to mandate three-driver line-ups for all WEC races within the Hypercar division, which was rejected by a majority of contributors.
The Jota workforce that has taken over the manufacturing facility Cadillac programme is anticipated to run three drivers in every of its V-Collection.Rs subsequent yr, whereas it’s unclear if another producer will go for two drivers for the six-hour races.