Thomas Laudenbach, Porsche’s motorsport manager, says that the German marque is prioritising delivering a modest number of 963s to high-quality customer teams, instead of selling as many cars as possible for use in the FIA WEC and IMSA going forward.
Speaking to select media in a roundtable at Spa-Francorchamps last weekend, hours before HERTZ Team JOTA became the first customer team to race a 963 globally, Laudenbach (below) confirmed that there is still demand for the car. However, he went on to explain that Porsche’s strategy is to only sell cars to additional teams if it has the capacity to provide high-level support, meaning the number of customer programmes is not likely to ‘explode’ from 2024 onwards.
“For the moment there is a demand, for the moment our intention (in customer racing) hasn’t changed, but we are looking at it carefully,” he explained. “The goal is not a business case, you have to provide a lot of service and support. If we do customer sport we have to do it the proper way, it’s not about selling cars, it’s easy to sell cars.
“If we see a 963 on the grid we want to make sure it’s running properly. I have no interest in seeing a car rolling around at the back because we are not giving it the right support. It’s not about selling a car and not caring. This is top-level customer sport. We would always decide not to sell it if we weren’t convinced it was a proper package or if we couldn’t support it properly due to capacity.”
So how many customer-run 963s will we see racing globally in the years to come? Currently, HERTZ Team JOTA, JDC-Miller Motorsports and Proton Competition have all publicly joined the stable, with JOTA and JDC having already taken delivery of cars.
Of the three, JOTA has publicaly confirmed its intention to double up to two cars in 2024, with both set to contest the FIA WEC alongside a potential bolt-on IMSA endurance programme. Proton meanwhile, is known to have an intention to double up both its WEC and IMSA commitments.
Beyond these orders, Porsche doesn’t have a number to hit and doesn’t wish to fill up both the FIA WEC and IMSA top-class grids with cars.
“We don’t have a target, the target is that if we don’t have a proper package we don’t do it,” Laudenbach stressed. “We have sold two cars here (WEC), I don’t think it would be more feasible to do more than two more in series. That would be six Porsche on the grid, we are not talking about the Carerra Cup.
If we see a 963 on the grid we want to make sure it’s running properly
“(In the WEC) Two Porsche Penske, JOTA, Proton and probably two more,” he listed. “It’s nothing we have fixed, it depends on how things develop, the interest and if we can service it.
“Yes, we are prepared to sell further cars, it is not limited, but there is a certain amount that makes sense. I don’t want to see 10 Porsche running and probably three other competitors, it’d be like a one-make series. That time (Group C) is over, it’s passed.
“It’s very important to have customer cars and I hope other manufacturers provide that too,” he admitted. “It doesn’t make our life easy but the platform will be stable. We are all on a honeymoon, there are a lot of cars. Manufacturers sometimes step in, sometimes step out. If we want a long-term future for this sport it’s good to have customer cars, so I would be happy if others did the same.”
Once the ruleset has matured, would Porsche feel it was still viable to run factory cars in IMSA and the FIA WEC if it has a high-quality set of customer teams in both championships? It’s a debate that Laudenbach won’t be drawn into at this stage.
“It’s not something we are thinking about,” he responded. “We are at the start, that’s the end. We want to win races, we want to win Le Mans, then we see what happens.”
One factor that will likely affect the number of sales for Porsche and the other LMDh manufacturers with customer plans however, is the effectiveness of the Balance of Performance process, particularly in the FIA WEC where LMDh and LMH-spec cars are already competing together.
If we want a long-term future for this sport it’s good to have customer cars
Toyota has won all three WEC races so far this season, and Porsche feels that while the LMDh Cadillacs and Porsches have been well-balanced, there is a clear gap between them and the front-running LMH Toyotas and Ferraris on performance that needs to be looked at.
Laudenbach is under no illusions that balancing cars from the two rulesets has been and always will be difficult. But he expects a change to the Platform BoP soon.
“We have two sets of rules, LMH and LMDh. It relies on adjustments, it’s a principle of the series whether you like it not not. Therefore, what we see on the track clearly needs adjustment,” he pointed out. “You have the same results as I have, we are not talking about a pure set of rules we are talking about a championship that has BoP as a principle. I’m not judging or criticising, everyone signed up agreed to it.
“We all know it’s (a BoP change) going to come,” he continued. “I was expecting it (a change) after Portimao, but I have been told we do it before Le Mans. After Portimao is before Le Mans and after Spa is still before Le Mans. But that’s down to the ACO and more so the FIA to decide.
“We clearly expect an adjustment before Le Mans. It was clearly told (to us) there will be a platform BoP (change), which I was expecting after Portimao, but now it’s before Le Mans. Why? Because I can read the results.
“What clearly can be stated is that if you look at the LMDh cars, they are very close together,” he added. “We only have two brands here, in the US there are four, it’s not 100 per cent comparable, but it’s fairly close. There are some advantages here and there, ‘Did you get the set-up right?’ etc, but it’s in a narrow range. The same here (in the FIA WEC), the two LMDhs here are closer, but if you look at the whole range of LMHs, the rest of the Hypercar field, there is a wider range.
“It’s tricky now. This makes the job of providing a fair chance for everybody very difficult.”
Does he feel the performances from the LMDh cars so far this season have had an impact on interest for future 963 programmes from aspirant customer teams?
“The nice thing is that if a customer wants to buy an LMDh we are the only ones providing it. I’m not worried, it’s far too early to say,” he said.
Beyond its LMDh customer programme, Porsche has additional decisions to make for the forthcoming switch from GTE to LMGT3 in the FIA WEC from next season. It is expected that the manufacturers involved in the new-look GT class will be allocated two grid slots each to hand to customer teams.
For a manufacturer like Porsche, choosing a team is unlikely to be a simple process. The number of teams hoping to compete in the FIA WEC LMGT3 class with the 911 GT3 R 992 is almost certainly set to be significantly higher than the number of entries Porsche can hand out.
At present, it hasn’t yet made a decision on how it will decide.
“We will talk to the teams,” he said. “It’s not easy. We will not do factory motor racing in GT, whatever the others do. In IMSA we do customer racing and they are beating factory teams which is the biggest fun you can have. We are happy to help with drivers and technical support and we are happy to support in a very limited financial way, nothing to do with factory racing.
We will not do factory motor racing in GT, whatever the others do.
“The amount is so low that we can’t interfere with the teams. We are not making decisions for them, we are not responsible. We have done this in a very efficient way for many years and we are the benchmark.”
Would Porsche prefer a single team with two cars than two cars run by two teams?
“We don’t have a preference,” Laudenbach replied. “We have to decide how we do it. It’s a situation we haven’t been in, if you do it as a factory team it’s easy, we have two entries and we come as a factory team and do it.
“When we have done customer sport we have never given entries to teams, it’s the first time. We want to be fair because there are probably more customers that want to do it than we have entries. We will have a clear criteria for how we chose them, it shouldn’t be ‘I like this team, so let’s give it to this team’. It’s a brand new situation.
“We will try to look for the fairest way we can find. If you have 10 teams and only two entries you have to make a decision. If it ends up with two cars with one team it’s fine, if it ends up with two teams it is also fine.”
Images courtesy of Frozenspeed, Porsche and JDC-Miller
