Portimao Podium “Step in Right Direction” for Porsche WEC Team

Kevin Estre hailed Porsche Penske Motorsport’s third-place finish in the 6 Hours of Portimao as “a step in the right direction” for its Hypercar operation after it beat fellow LMDh manufacturer Cadillac to the final step of the overall podium in Portugal.

The No. 6 Porsche 963, which Estre shared with Laurens Vanthoor and Andre Lotterer, finished third in Sunday’s six-hour enduro behind the No. 8 Toyota GR010 Hybrid and No. 50 Ferrari 499P.

It marks the first time the Multimatic-chassied prototype has finished on the podium in the FIA World Endurance Championship. Porsche concluded the Sebring season opener in March in fifth and sixth place.

Estre expressed happiness about the result, although he noted that Porsche’s podium quest was aided by troubles for both Toyota and Ferrari earlier in the race.

Both marques saw their second cars encounter problems of varying nature, with the No. 7 Toyota losing seven laps due to a torque sensor failure requiring a driveshaft change, and the No. 51 Ferrari struggling with brake problems for a large part of the race.

“For sure I’ll take that,” said Estre. “Compared to where we were in Sebring, we definitely made some steps.

“Although, for sure, we would not have been P3 if one Toyota would not have an issue and Ferrari probably as well.

“But we are there. We did not make a mistake or very, very little and that’s why we are here. We made a step in the right direction.”

While Estre reckoned Porsche still has some work to do in order to be able to match Toyota and Ferrari on race pace, he felt that beating fellow LMDh marque Cadillac at Portimao was an uplifting outcome for the team.

“We definitely had a very hard weekend in Sebring for both championships,” the Frenchman spoke.

“I think we worked very hard after that. The engineers worked very hard to try to improve it.

“We made some steps and it’s definitely very good for the mood.

“Nevertheless, we just have to still be realistic that the pace was still not where we want to be and Toyota is a lot quicker and Ferrari is also a lot quicker.

“But we beat Cadillac on pace, on strategy everywhere this weekend, which is for sure a big accomplishment for us and [something] we can be proud of.

“Because we were quite far in Sebring actually. So this is for sure the big gain we had this weekend.”

Estre’s remarks were echoed by factory LMDh director Urs Kuratle, who stated Porsche made a “big step” at Portimao despite dealing with issues on both of its cars.

“It was not an easy one today actually because we had a power steering issue on one [car] and we had a fuel system issue on the other [car],” said Kuratle.

He went on to explain that a split tire strategy between the two cars ended up giving the No. 6 machine a pace advantage over the sister entry of Dane Cameron, Frederic Makowiecki and Michael Christensen.

However, Lotterer’s run to third was complicated by the aforementioned fuel sensor problem, which required the German to make a late splash in the final fifteen minutes.

While Kuratle said that further analysis would be required to determine the root cause of the issue, he praised his team for the way it managed the problem in the latter stages of the contest.

“That shows how the team grows together on the strategy department, that was really well executed because we had only little information what really was in the fuel cell to be very honest,” Kuratle explained.

“That was a gamble because obviously we knew that the Cadillac was catching up.

“We [made] the right call and that was managed really, really well. I mean, that was something.

“It’s not an easy situation in this thing and then we could kind of like control the Cadillac on this one and that was the podium, second P3 on the same race weekend.

“We have to manage this somehow, two times this weekend.

“Anyways, it’s good. So the ship [gained] speed now. It’s [gaining] speed.”

Daniel Lloyd contributed to this report