Proton Competition is planning to undertake full-season programmes in the top class of the FIA WEC and IMSA WeatherTech Sports Car Championship in 2024 with its Porsche 963 LMDh prototypes.
Team boss Christian Ried has confirmed to DSC that Proton is committing at least one 963 to the top class of both championships, despite the calendar clashes during the season that it will have to navigate.
Ideally, Proton would like to run two 963s in both Hypercar and GTP next year, but its ability to do so depends on when it takes delivery of its third and fourth chassis.
Currently, Proton is in possession of two 963s, which were both delivered much later than planned. The first arrived days before the FIA WEC round at Monza after the Le Mans 24 Hours in July. The second was made available just in time for the WEC race at Fuji earlier this month, allowing Proton to switch its first chassis to IMSA spec for the races Road America, Indianapolis and Petit Le Mans.
The delays, Ried admits, have made it a frustrating start to life in the top class.
“It’s not a secret that we were not happy with the delivery dates for the cars,” he told DSC. “It’s why we are running in LMP2, because we found out that we wouldn’t have 963s in time for the start of the season. So we bought a used ORECA from Algarve Pro, that was a great help. We needed to train our guys with a prototype.
“This year was a big big step. Last year was the biggest programme we’d ever done, this year has been even more because of the LMDh effort. It was a big step for us, it’s why we went racing in LMP2 as we had no experience in prototypes.
“We had already signed guys with prototype experience before the season but we didn’t have the car. So in the end it was the right call to buy an LMP2 and race at Daytona and in the ELMS.
“Initially, we wanted to test the 963s for five or six days before racing, even if it meant missing Spa and Le Mans. But in the end we got our first car just before Monza, so we didn’t get to anyway.
“It was really tough,” he admitted. “It was hard to see the guys working so hard on the car that weekend (at Monza), going back to the hotel at night just for a shower before coming straight back to the track. In the end it was a great weekend, even though we retired with an issue that was a mistake from the mechanics, but you cannot blame them, they worked day and night.”
If Proton doesn’t take delivery of its remaining 963s before the start of next season, then its ‘Plan B’ is to run them at select rounds later in the 2024 season.
“We still are in discussion with Porsche about when we can have number three and four. But it looks difficult to get them for the beginning of the season. So it looks like we will be running one car in the FIA WEC and one in IMSA.
“When we got the calendar it was a big surprise to see so many clashes. It makes it very complicated. If we don’t get the extra cars we will do one in each and then maybe we can enter in IMSA endurance races like Watkins and Petit with a second car, and maybe a second car for Le Mans.”
In the background, Porsche is known to be working on updates to its LMDh-spec 963, primarily to enhance the car’s reliability ahead of next season, and has already begun testing 2024 solutions on track.
To ensure it can make its desired improvements to the car in time for the start of the 2024 IMSA season in January and the WEC campaign in March, DSC understands that it needs to be ready to homologate the new components in time for the IMSA Daytona test in December, to gain approval from the ACO, FIA and IMSA in time for the Rolex 24.
Should Porsche receive approval for its improvements, then by regulation its customer teams will also need to race with the new upgrades applied to their cars with immediate effect. This is something that Ried acknowledged.
The reason Proton hasn’t received its third and fourth cars, Ried said, “is due to the upgrades and supply issues. It’s complicated. But everyone in the paddock is struggling in this way. It’s strange to see. Everyone is blaming suppliers due to Covid but that was a long time ago now.
“The contract with Porsche is that our customer cars will be the same spec as factory cars. I don’t know when they will supply us with the new parts, but it will be the same time as everybody.
“The car is strong,” he continued. “It surprises me how close we are without any testing. We saw at Indy and Fuji that Penske found something too.”
Because of the clashes for the teams running in the IMSA GTP and WEC Hypercar classes (between the races at Long Beach and Imola in April and Laguna Seca and Spa in May) Proton’s drivers will be unable to complete full seasons in both championships.
As a result, Ried says the driver line-ups for both campaigns are still undecided.
“Driver line-ups, engineers, mechanics. It’s hard,” he explained. “We can’t run Gimmi (Bruni), Harry (Tincknell) and Neel (Jani) in both championships, it makes it challenging and expensive. There’s a lot of interest though from mechanics and drivers.
“It’s a good challenge because everyone wants to be in the top category. The business model is different. Normally our cars have been funded by gentlemen, but we don’t have that in LMDh, so it makes it more complicated. Right now we just need to figure things out and find the right budget for a nice programme.
“We have nothing confirmed for next year, but we know our three drivers want to continue and I am really happy with all of them.”
In IMSA, Proton has also been running WeatherTech Racing’s GTD effort with Mercedes-AMG. Whether or not that continues in 2024 is currently being discussed too.
“We are in discussion with David MacNeil to work out if we will continue the programme or not,” Ried added. “We have three options: Stop the programme, a full season or only the endurance races.
“It’s no secret that David was not happy with the BoP this year, it was nice at the beginning of the year but after Sebring we struggled a lot. We were lucky to win the race at Laguna. We had a nice change for Indy, and with the right BoP we are sure we can win again.
“I think it will be really important to see what we can do at Petit, then David will make his decision, whatever that is.”
Either way, Ried has ruled out taking any of the team’s new Mustang GT3s to the USA for additional races beyond their planned FIA WEC and ELMS programmes.
“Multimatic are good enough that they won’t need any assistance at the big races in IMSA,” Ried said.
Images courtesy of Porsche and IMSA
