Will Porsche stay, or will it go? It’s a topic which has received plenty of attention in the FIA WEC and IMSA paddocks this year since the season began at Daytona back in January.
There has been speculation from teams, OEMs, and suppliers that the German brand’s commitment to racing in IMSA GTP and FIA WEC Hypercar full-time may be wavering as we approach 2026.
It’s an expensive endeavour to do both at a time when many major OEMs are looking for areas to save money. And with the shape of the technical ruleset’s future still up for debate, Porsche is taking a long, hard look at its options.
Currently, Porsche has told DSC that the 963 programme is confirmed internally through the end of the 2027 season, in both IMSA and the FIA WEC. The question mark, Porsche’s higher-ups say, comes beyond that.
Right now, behind closed doors, Porsche’s motorsport division is discussing with the board an extension of the 963 programme to the end of 2029, putting it in line with the ruleset extension announced at Le Mans in 2024.
Despite this, there are some in the WEC and IMSA paddock who believe Porsche may cut the IMSA GTP programme entirely in 2026, or perhaps scale back to just the Endurance Cup rounds. Though Porsche remains confident that it will still be in both championships this time next year with LMDh prototypes.
Perhaps the bigger question mark concerns the rulebook from 2030 onwards. Porsche has been vocal in expressing its interest in a move to a single platform for the top class of sportscar racing, rather than the current situation, which allows manufacturers to design a car for either the LMH or LMDh rules and compete together.
“The (FIA WEC Hypercar) championship is extended,” Urs Kuratle, the director of factory LMDh racing at Porsche, pointed out to DSC at Interlagos. “On which rulebook it is, is not quite clear from the press release.
“My personal point of view is that I really hope it will be one common rulebook, one common technical rulebook. We are talking 2030, 2031 and 2032. There are still a couple of years until 2030, and I believe it would be possible to change the technical rules by then in a fair way for all the OEMs to reach a common technical ruleset.
“It’s something that from Porsche’s point of view we are trying to push, to get in this direction.”
Is there an expectation that Porsche, and/or its competitors, would want to bring an entirely new car to the formula by the end of the decade to coincide with a shift to a single platform? By that point, the early adopters would be racing with fully mature cars, first raced back in 2021, 2022 or 2023.
Kuratle feels that wouldn’t be necessary. It would help keep costs under control, and through updates to styling, manufacturers could still keep their prototypes looking fresh.
“Does it matter if the chassis is an old one? Does it really matter? There can be design updates. There should be possibilities in the same rulebook to update the view of the car,” Kuratle added.
“But whether the chassis design is 5 or 7 years old, does it matter? It should be sustainable, financially, to manage the whole thing. Making a completely new car under a very similar rulebook, does it make sense?
“We have a perfectly nice championship, record crowds, we have the reach numbers from Le Mans that were the best ever this year. Do the fans really care about the age of the chassis and suspension? The parts won’t be old, just the design. As long as the OEMs have the representative design on the car, why change it?”
For now, Porsche is discussing internally how to proceed with its LMDh programme beyond 2027.
“Nothing is decided, there’s no date when it’s decided,” Kuratle explained “It’s a normal process for an OEM to look at how much you spend and how much you get back. It has to be proven constantly, and this is the process we are in within Porsche.
“This is exactly the question we have to answer now. We have to discuss with the board if this is what Porsche would like to be part of. 2023 was the first year, now we are talking 2030. We are reaching very high numbers on how long the championship lasts and how long an OEM considers a platform to be the right one.
“I am not sure how many OEMs we see now in the championship will still be there in 2030. I hope Porsche will be there, Porsche belongs to sports car racing, but whether that still is the case is the question we have to answer now.”
The other element to this is the partnership with Team Penske. There has been speculation that Penske is exploring another deal, potentially coinciding with a withdrawal from Porsche.
The obvious candidate is Ford, which is still building up its programme for 2027 in the FIA WEC. Previously, Mark Rushbrook, the global director of Ford Performance, told DSC that if its Hypercar effort were to expand to IMSA’s GTP class, the Blue Oval would want a service provider in place that could operate across both championships.
“It may become a global programme for IMSA, and we need to be prepared. If we do, we would only want one race team to cover both series as a factory, not two teams doing two different series,” Rushbrook said.
Penske would of course fit the brief, though it is not the only organisation currently being looked at.
In the meantime, Kuratle describes the Porsche-Penske relationship as “very close”. “We’ve built up two teams together. That’s no question, whether there’s a separation between Porsche and Penske when it comes to sportscar racing.”
Penske, meanwhile, tells DSC that it “hopes to be racing with Porsche for a long time to come.”
Daytona image courtesy of IMSA
