In the wake of the formal announcement at Goodwood of the Porsche 963 LMDH car and the majority of the factory driver roster came the first news of confirmed customer programmes for both Jota and JDC Miller in the FIA WEC and IMSA WeatherTech Sportscar Championship respectively.
Jota, one of the established FIA WEC LMP2 ‘superteams’ announced their step up in the wake of a dominant 2022 Le Mans 24 Hour class win.
JOTA have Championship-winning form on their racing cv in the European Le Mans Series and, under the Jackie Chan DC Racing Banner and their own, have race-winning form in the WEC too as well as a trio of Le Mans class wins. A record of 10 podium finishes at Le Mans in the past nine years makes for a stunning statistic.
2023 though will be the team’s first return to the top class of endurance prototype racing since 2009 when they provided the technical back-up to the Corsa Motorsport Zytek Hybrid effort in the American Le Mans Series.
Oddly then the British squad returned to top class racing with the first customer hybrid in the WEC after previous involvement in operating one of only two customer hybrid efforts ever raced in the ALMS (along with the very brief career of the ToroTrak- Dyson Lola)!
Before that they operated a Lola Judd under the Charouz Racing System banner at Le Mans in 2008, this after the team ran the same car for Charouz in the 2007 Le Mans Series.
That effort followed on from Zytek machinery in LMP1 under their own and then Zytek’s branding in 2005 and 2006.
The Hypercar effort is another addition therefore to an almost complete ‘set’ for Jota with efforts in LMP1, LMP2 (and SR2), GTE Pro (2012 with an Aston Martin), GT3, GT4 (with the in-house developed Mazda MX5 and a class winning Spa 24 Aston Martin), V4 at the Nurburgring (again with Mazda) and CN in the VdeV!
