Porsche Rules Out Customer LMDh Cars Until Late April

Photo: John Dagys

Porsche has ruled out customer deliveries of its LMDh car until the end of April according to the manufacturer’s LMDh director Urs Kuratle.

The development comes in the wake of Porsche Motorsport boss Thomas Laudenbach stating last month that it would be “extremely tough” to see privateer Porsche 963s on the grid for the Rolex 24 at Daytona.

Speaking with Sportscar365 at this week’s IMSA-sanctioned test at Daytona International Speedway, Kuratle stressed that all three of its 2023 customers — JDC-Miller Motorsports, JOTA and Proton Competition — were made aware of the April timeframe before the signing of contracts.

He explained the reason for the delivery dates are directly tied to supply-chain issues.

“The delivery date is the end of April,” Kuratle told Sportscar365. “There’s not a specific date set yet when which customer gets its car because they have to be built.

“Plans are constantly changing and we are discussing.

“This is no news for the customers; that’s important to note. They all knew in advance exactly that thing, that it is April.

“Now, due to a lot of reasons we have to shift it to the end of April, but it’s still April.

“That answers the question. It’s no Daytona, no Sebring, no Long Beach or Portimao. But from then on, we’ll try everything to deliver the cars earlier but it will not be weeks and for sure not months [earlier].”

The timeframe puts the FIA World Endurance Championship’s 6 Hours of Spa on April 29 as potentially the soonest race for a customer debut.

The earliest IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship round would be its fourth round of the season at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca on May 14.

Kuratle said it hasn’t yet been determined on which teams would get the cars first.

“This is one discussion we are internally discussing right now because we do not want to hold anything back,” he said.

“It would be stupid if we had a customer’s car ready and built up in Weissach and we don’t deliver it for whatever reason. Those are games we don’t want to play and certainly we will not play like this.

“We will build up the customer cars with the customer teams as well.

“These guys, we try to get them as soon as possible hands-on with the car.

“They have their schedule internally on what they do with their mechanics and engineers that have to be set up and finalized and defined.

“It maybe turns out that one gets the car a couple of days ahead of the other one… It’s not possible to do it all in parallel.”

JDC-Miller Motorsports team co-owner John Church, who is on-site at this week’s test, acknowledged the April delivery date when asked by Sportscar365.

Kuratle added: “We understand they don’t like it. We don’t like it either. The governance bodies don’t like it.

“It’s a very ambitious program. We can see the works teams, all of the OEMs, trying to get the cars running right now today, and that’s four-and-a-half months ahead of a delivered customer car.

“If you look at it from that point of view, it’s very ambitious. Still, we’re pushing very hard.”

John Dagys

John Dagys is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Sportscar365. Dagys spent eight years as a motorsports correspondent for FOXSports.com and SPEED Channel and has contributed to numerous other motorsports publications worldwide. Contact John