Porsche appears poised to tackle the extra 24 Hours of Le Mans share it gained by winning the IMSA SportsCar Championship crown at Road Atlanta last weekend.
Thomas Laudenbach, head of Porsche Motorsport, told Autosport/Motorsport.com that it “absolutely makes sense” for Penske Motorsport's Porsche works squad to run a 3rd 963 LMDh within the double-points round of the World Endurance Championship, along with two full-season entries.
At the identical time, he emphasized that the ultimate decision regarding the extra automotive had not been made yet.
Porsche successfully applied to put an extra factory 963 at Le Mans in 2023 and 2024, but is guaranteed additional entry next 12 months after winning the IMSA GTP title within the No. 7 automotive driven by Felipe Nasr and Dane Cameron within the 10- the season-ending Petit Le Mans hour race last Saturday.
“No decision has been made yet, but it is more likely that we will start with three, especially now that we have applications,” Laudenbach said.
“You need a budget for this, but all of us know the way quickly a automotive can retire from a race at Le Mans.
“That's why we've done it with three players for the last two years and that's why there's a good chance we'll do it again with three players.”
#7 Team Penske Motorsport Porsche 963: Dane Cameron, Felipe Nasr
Photo: Michael L. Levitt / Motorsport Images
Porsche appears able to enter the WEC Le Mans round next June with a reduced variety of cars within the Hypercar class, even when it decides that PPM will field three cars for the third 12 months in a row.
The Jota customer team, which is running two Porsches in Hypercar this 12 months, will switch to Cadillac in 2025 when it becomes the factory representative of the General Motors brand rather than Chip Ganassi Racing.
Even if Proton Competition, the opposite customer team entering the 963 within the WEC, expands to 2 cars, it looks like Porsche's year-round WEC representation shall be reduced from five to 4 cars.
Laudenbach confirmed that the announcement of the PPM driver lineups for the 2025 season on the planet and North American championships shall be made before the tip of the WEC season.
“An announcement shall be made before the Bahrain race [on 2 November]- he said.
Given this news, it seems unlikely that a call on a 3rd automotive at Le Mans shall be made in time for its drivers to be included within the announcement.
IMSA has the fitting to award three entries to June's blue ribbon round of WEC Le Mans through race organizer Automobile Club de l'Ouest.
One of the so-called “total entries” goes to the winning automotive within the GTP teams' championship, which won the No. 7 PPM of title-winning drivers Nasr and Cameron.
The other two awards go to the winners of the Jim Trueman and Bob Akin awards.
These awards are awarded to bronze-placed drivers in LMP2 and GT Daytona, respectively, based on a separate classification for the major class championship.
Nick Boulle, who also won the LMP2 title with Tom Dillmann at Inter Europol via PR1/Mathiasen, and Orey Fidani, who raced with Matt Bell for the AWA Chevrolet team, won each awards and due to this fact each had an automatic entry into Le Mans .
