In order to be anything but a disappointment, Porsche’s newest endurance-racing machine, the 963, must win the 24 Hours of Le Mans. The trouble is it was born into the most competitive field since the mid-Eighties. For the 2022 race, only Toyota, Alpine, and Glickenhaus entered top-tier hypercars. For the 2023 edition, Cadillac, Peugeot, and—wait for it—Ferrari will also be gunning for the win. That’s one very high bar to clear.
This story originally appeared in Volume 16 of Road & Track.
Every top-class Porsche prototype has won the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Stuttgart has 19 overall victories, the single most impressive record for an auto-racing manufacturer, and it illustrates more than a half-century of improbable consistency.
Porsche’s overall Le Mans wins stretch back to 1970, but its recent history at la Sarthe is one of dominance. The 919 Hybrid, the only Porsche prototype to fight for a Le Mans win in this millennium, raced for just four seasons; it won Le Mans and the FIA World Endurance Championship three times each. After its retirement, the 919 Hybrid became the barnstorming 919 Evo. That car, freed of all regulations, lapped the Nürburgring in 5 minutes, 19.55 seconds, obliterating Stefan Bellof’s long-held 1983 record in a Porsche 956 by nearly a minute.
The 963 is a departure for Porsche, as it isn’t all built in-house. Prototypes that adhere to the new LMDh rules are built around a next-generation LMP2-class carbon-fiber tub—Porsche’s is from Multimatic—and a spec hybrid system. Manufacturers have relatively free rein with body design and the engine. The 963 uses a twin-turbo 4.6-liter V-8, one with roots in the V-8 from the RS Spyder, Porsche’s championship-winning LMP2 rocket ship of the Aughts. The new engine uses low boost pressure to produce relatively even torque distribution and combines with the hybrid system for a peak output of 671 hp, the limit for the class. The 963’s design incorporates elements of road cars into a sleek, timeless look, with headlights below the fenders and a taillight bar reminiscent of the current 911.
Urs Kuratle has been with Porsche since the early days of the 919 program. He now serves as the director of factory racing for the 963. When Porsche ran the 919 operation on its own, the program was roughly 200 people strong. Now, with outside firms providing the chassis and spec parts, Kuratle cannot estimate how many people are involved in building and running the car.
“It’s difficult to say. We have the two Penske Porsche programs in two facilities, and then we have the development facilities in Weissach, and we have all these people we don’t know working at Bosch, Williams, and Xtrac for the standard components in the development areas for those companies,” Kuratle says. “Overall, the number of people may be bigger than it used to be in LMP1, but they’re not serving one team or OEM. They’re serving four of them and customers.”
The complexity of the supply chain sets up no small challenge, even for the winningest brand in Le Mans history. That’s why Porsche partnered with the most powerful force in American racing.
Team Penske’s success cannot be overstated. Roger Penske, a former racing driver from Ohio, built a team around the multifaceted racer Mark Donohue in the late Sixties. A half century on, Penske’s team has won the Indy 500 18 times, the IndyCar championship 17 times, the NASCAR Cup Series championship three times, and the Australian V-8 Supercars championship three times. Penske has often aligned with manufacturers in sports-car racing, including with Porsche for its early-Seventies 917 Can-Am and mid-Aughts RS Spyder. The team most recently competed with Acura in IMSA’s DPi category, winning eight races and two titles over three seasons.
Penske himself, now one of the wealthiest men in the automotive industry after decades leading both the team and a sprawling corporate empire, has a reputation for running his team with the attention to detail and resources of the New York Yankees’ management. Drivers must maintain a clean look. Perfectly pressed white short-sleeve button-down shirts are the team’s signature attire. Haulers are wrapped in black, red, and chrome, always shined to an impressive finish. If you’ve followed any top-level American racing series over the past 50 years, you know a Penske-run team on sight.
While Penske’s success is largely confined to American racing, his team is responsible for the 963’s factory effort in IMSA and the World Endurance Championship. The challenge required significant restructuring and investment.
Porsche Penske Motorsport managing director Jonathan Diuguid is responsible for building new “mirrored” Penske teams in the U.S. and Europe. The two resulting programs—one in Mooresville, North Carolina, and the other in Mannheim, Germany—draw from pools of talent experienced in IMSA and WEC. Their ability to share notes as part of a whole-factory operation is a unique strength. Diuguid says the team will use all of that combined strength at once to support the relevant programs at Daytona and Le Mans.
The pairing is less of a culture clash and more of a fascinating look at where German and American racing culture dovetail. Penske’s signature sharp aesthetics are unmistakable, even in a December test six weeks before the 963’s Daytona debut. Of the four manufacturers present, only the newly christened Porsche Penske Motorsport had official signage in its temporary garage. Porsche, with its decades-long Hugo Boss sponsorship, decked out drivers and crew members in fashionable uniforms just a few logos away from upscale business casual. Every other team at the test had a green plastic cone to indicate whether the hybrid-assisted car was discharged and safe for mechanics to touch; only Porsche and Penske use a metal beacon that changes color from red to green to signal the same thing. It’s a partnership built on shared professionalism.
The team announced Brazilian former Formula 1 driver and IMSA DPi champion Felipe Nasr and American three-time IMSA champ Dane Cameron as the 963 program’s first two drivers. Since Porsche was the first LMDh manufacturer to test, Nasr gained early experience with the complex new hybrid systems, but it was an early struggle.
“There are a couple of speed bumps along the way when you’re the only one in the world running these components,” Nasr says. “You always want to be further ahead in motorsport, and there are a lot of things we learned throughout this time that we’ve improved. As a slight additional challenge, we’re building these two teams for WEC and IMSA. So not only are we developing the car, but we’re also staffing the program.”
That program and the people Penske chose have only impressed Nasr. “It’s a bunch of professional guys, hard workers, and it’s been great. My plan is to take these guys to victory lane.”
While Cameron has been with Penske for years, 2023 will mark his first season with Porsche. “It’s really special. I’ve been in sports cars for a while, and I’ve raced against the Porsche brand for a long time. I’ve seen their strength. I’ve seen their success. And I’ve seen how they look after the people who have success there.” He specifically notes the triumphs of two other Americans, now-retired drivers Hurley Haywood and Patrick Long, whom he says have been “ingrained in the fabric of the brand” after their years with Porsche. “I always kind of looked up to it, I guess, aspired to it. So it’s really cool to be here, to be in this program. To be a Porsche works driver is special to me.”
Eight other drivers, mostly from Porsche’s recently shuttered factory 911 RSR program, will join Nasr and Cameron in four cars across both series. Cameron is confirmed for a WEC schedule in Europe; Nasr will run in IMSA full time and will pilot an additional entry fielded at Le Mans in June.
The 963 made its racing debut at January’s 24 Hours of Daytona. Despite entering the race as a heavy favorite thanks to the team’s extensive preparation, both cars suffered mechanical issues. One needed a battery replacement mere hours into the race and finished more than 30 laps behind the leaders. The other, already laps behind after spinning in traffic, retired with a transmission issue.
It was, to say the least, a disappointing start. For Porsche Penske’s part, Diuguid sees it as a hard lesson on the road to Le Mans.
“I don’t think we can be happy with any result that doesn’t have us winning the race or fighting for the win on the last lap,” he says. “We’re disappointed, but I couldn’t be prouder of the effort, attitude, and approach all the people on our team have taken during and after the race, trying to make sure we’re better next time we show up.”
Four 963s will compete at Le Mans in June, including three from the factory team. For Roger Penske and his 57-year-old organization, a win in the 24 Hours of Le Mans would be a new crown jewel in a well-stocked trophy case. For Porsche, it would be a standard maintained.
Update: Since Daytona, the road has been rough for Porsche Penske Motorsport and their 963s. Cars running first and third at the 12 Hours of Sebring were caught up in the same crash, throwing away what would have been a signature early win for the program. The car has one win after a dramatic final lap of the IMSA race at Long Beach, but the team has struggled to compete with Toyota on pace in three WEC races run to date. As Le Mans approaches, a serious shot at Toyota in year one may be a tall ask.
