Diuguid: No Added Pressure to Perform by Customer 963s

Photo: Porsche

Porsche Penske Motorsport doesn’t feel any added pressure to perform from the increasingly competitive crop of Porsche 963s in both the FIA World Endurance Championship and IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship according to its managing director Jonathan Diuguid.

The factory Porsche squad, which claimed a season-high three WeatherTech Championship victories last year, will face direct competition from both Proton Competition and JDC-Miller Motorsports for the first time in an entire season this year.

Proton will also have a customer 963 in the WEC alongside an expanded two-car effort from Hertz Team JOTA, featuring top name talent such as Jenson Button and Callum Ilott.

There were a handful of occasions last year where the Porsche customers finished ahead of the works team, although this has not fazed the Porsche Penske organization.

“I don’t view it as any more pressure because it’s our responsibility to compete against everyone that’s on the track, if they’re customers with the same car or if they’re competitors with different manufacturer’s car,” said Diuguid.

“But I do think our group and the Porsche Motorsport group can take some pride in the early success of the customer cars because I think it goes to show that when they were delivered a car it was at a state where they could take it to the race track and focus on racing it.

“Like Urs [Kuratle, Porsche LMDh factory director] has mentioned, the customers have what we have and they also have the benefits of the development process that Porsche and our team went through together.

“I think those two things combined, are shown by the success of JOTA, Proton and JDC on the track and the current state of where the 963 is.

“Once it gets to that point, it’s on our team and our engineers, mechanics and drivers to compete against everybody.”

Kuratle has praised the job done by the customers teams so far, which included a podium finish at Motul Petit Le Mans for the Proton squad.

“There will be some close fights this year,” Kuratle predicts. “I don’t think the PPM people have to be afraid because that’s one car at a track that they have to compete against.”

When asked if one of the privateer teams could end up winning a race this year, in either series, Kuratle said: “Why not?”

“As long as it’s a Porsche, it’s a good result,” he added.

Kuratle: Customers Can Gain Edge Through Breakthroughs in Car Setup

While a certain level of information is shared between Porsche Penske and the customers, Kuratle confirmed that performance-related setup data does not cross over.

It thus provides a opportunity for each individual team to excel in that specific department.

“We have the customer support team, which is somewhere between the works team and the customer team,” Kuratle explained.

“If there is information that has to be shared between one or the other, it will obviously be shared.

“Reliability problems, if something breaks on one car, immediately all of the other cars need to know.

“But at one point it’s coming to performance. Then there’s not such a direct link between all those teams.

“If one of the customer teams finds something very good on a setup, etc, then it will not be shared with Porsche Penske Motorsport.

“That is one thing which is a constant discussion between the customer teams and Porsche AG and also Porsche Penske Motorsport, on which informations are shared and how are they shared.

“These days with telemetry being everything in the cloud, it would be possible to know a lot of things. but still we want to leave the teams alone on their side.

“We, in this case, as Porsche AG, if they develop something and they can find something, they should also have the benefit out of it. The same goes for Porsche Penske Motorsport team.”

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