There is significant consternation amongst the Porsche GTD and GTD Pro runners with the confirmation that there have been no major changes in BoP ahead of this weekend’s Rolex 24 Hours with IMSA confirming today that there are no plans for further adjustments prior to the race.
This comes after the new Porsche 911 GT3Rs were all significantly off the ultimate pace throughout the on-track practice sessions.
“It seems that IMSA genuinely thinks that we have been sandbagging and honestly, they couldn’t be more wrong!” said one Team Manager to DSC.
“We are a genuine 2-3 seconds a lap down on the field on race pace,” said one of the Pro drivers in the GTD field. “At that rate, we will be lapped every stint.”
Multiple Porsche teams confirmed to DSC that the principal issue is straight-line speed, with spotters for other marques confirming to DSC that the difference is visible on track.
“The car was slow in a straight-line out of the box and whilst we have tried some things to improve matters it is simply not in the window. It’s frustrating that IMSA don’t believe us and it’s arguable that in this form it’s actually unsafe,” said a second Porsche GTD Team Manager. “On a restart, we are going to be sitting ducks for everyone else and arguably in the way.”
The deficit to the previous car is understood to be c.16km/h between the first hotshot and the kinking c.20km/h on the main straight.
At least one of the Porsche’s was examined in tech post-qualifying with the team confirming that it was acknowledged that the car ran on low fuel and with new tyres for the 15-minute session.
RLR MSport’s Nick Reynolds is the Race Engineer for Sean Creech Motorsport and their #33 Ligier JS P320. The team, who made a late switch of driver from Danny Soufi to Nolan Siegel today set pole position with no little help from Reynolds whose abilities in setting up the LMP3 machines have been widely praised.
The first of the historic cars that will form part of the infield display and on-track ’24 Minutes of Daytona’ have arrived at the circuit with a BMW Z4 GTLM and BMW GTP, closely followed by a Riley & Scott MkIII. There are several significant cars still to come including a Dyson Racing Porche 962 and the winners from 50 years ago (Brumos Porsche 911 RSR) and 40 years ago (The Swap Shop Porsche 935) which AO racing’s 2023 Porsche pays tribute to.
