Diuguid Explains Decision to Draft In Heinrich for Indy

Photo: Laurin Heinrich Instagram

Penske Racing President Jonathan Diuguid has explained the reasoning behind bringing Laurin Heinrich back to the Porsche Penske Motorsport fold one race earlier than expected.

Announced on Wednesday, Heinrich, who was due to make his sixth and final start with JDC-Miller Motorsports, will instead replace Laurens Vanthoor in the No. 6 Porsche 963 for next weekend’s TireRack Battle on the Bricks at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

It comes amid Heinrich being the Porsche driver with the best chance of taking the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship GTP title, as he sits only 118 points behind Action Express Racing driver Jack Aitken with two races to go.

“We’ve had these discussions around driver lineups for Daytona or Le Mans or some of these marquee events and ask how we’ve made decisions,” Diuguid told reporters during a Porsche-hosted media call. “The feedback has been pretty consistent.

“The Porsche driver development program and the Porsche driver stable is one of the best in the sports car industry, so we’re really choosing from race winners, champions and very experienced people.

“When we make these decisions, it’s not necessarily based around performance. It’s based around other situational factors.

“In this case, it’s related to the current points championship.

“Unfortunately the 6 car hasn’t had a year that it’s wanted. It suffered an accident at the end of the Road America race where they were fighting for a podium.”

That incident, which led to a post-race time penalty and Kevin Estre being placed on a two-race probation due to “unjustifiable risk”, has taken the Frenchman and his longtime co-driver Vanthoor out of a chance of the drivers’ title.

“The basic math of the situation is that Kevin and Laurens Vanthoor didn’t have the opportunity to win the drivers’ championship anymore, but Laurin Heinrich, who was in the PPM cars for Daytona and Sebring and has done an amazing job in the JDC customer car, capturing a [win] and podiums, still is in the fight for the drivers’ championship,” said Diuguid.

“The same could be said for Cadillac. Cadillac’s had a bunch of driver changes also, so he’s really fighting Jack Aitken.

“It’s basically Laurin Heinrich and Jack Aitken fighting each other and they’re in the situations for different reasons.

“We took the opportunity to bring Laurin into the PPM cars for the Indy race and he was already scheduled to be in there for the Road Atlanta race.

“It’s nothing against Laurens Vanthoor. It’s nothing against JDC because Larry and JDC have performed at an extremely high level.

“It’s what we had to line up to give ourselves the best shot to [get] the drivers’ championship for Porsche.

“Larry has been extremely professional throughout the whole discussions and had very high performance throughout the year.

“But the facts and reality of the situation is that this is what we think is the best way to accomplish the goal of winning the drivers’ championship.”

Diuguid confirmed that Vanthoor will be back in the No. 6 Porsche for Motul Petit Le Mans, alongside Estre and Matt Campbell, in the Australian’s final outing as a Porsche factory driver before switching to Ford Racing’s FIA World Endurance Championship Hypercar effort next year.

The No. 7 car, meanwhile, will see the reprisal of the Heinrich, Felipe Nasr and Julien Andlauer combo that took won the so-called ’36 Hours of Florida’ at the start of the year with victories in the Rolex 24 at Daytona and Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring.

When asked by Sportscar365 if Estre’s probational period poses a risk to have Heinrich, Porsche’s only realistic chance to win the GTP drivers’ title, Diuguid dismissed such claims.

“Kevin is extremely professional and understands and evaluates every situation he’s in,” he said. “It’s something we considered but I don’t think it’s negative in any scenario.”

Laudenbach: Porsche Considered Keeping Heinrich in JDC-Miller Entry for Rest of Year

With JDC-Miller’s entry, running to 2025 spec and with a difference Balance of Performance to the factory Porsche Penske cars, Porsche Motorsport boss Thomas Laudenbach admitted they had considered leaving Heinrich in the customer car for the rest of the season.

However, that was ultimately vetoed in favor of him being in the factory lineup.

From the time Heinrich joined JDC-Miller at Long Beach, he and co-driver Tijmen van der Helm have outscored both Porsche Penske entries in the five-race run by 123 points to the No. 7 Porsche and 171 points more than the No. 6 entry.

“We sat together we went through all the different scenarios,” said Laudenbach when asked by Sportscar365. “This was one of the scenarios we did look at, of course.

“In the end, again with the goal to maximize the chances for him to win the driver title, we took the decision to put him into the PPM car.

“We took that into consideration of course because it would have been a possible scenario.”

Diuguid added: “John Church and his team have done an amazing job. In the end Laurin is a factory driver and PPM is a factory team. We wouldn’t be here if we couldn’t apply the might of Porsche Motorsport to help achieve our goals.

“While Porsche supports JDC and the customer team significantly, they are a customer team and they are responsible for running their own organization, where as in the case of PPM and the factory program, we can harness the resources of Porsche Motorsport, whether that’s simulators or support engineers or powertrain engineers to try and maximize the results.

“That’s why we took the opportunity to bring him within the fold there to give him the most support to achieve the driver’s championship. That’s ultimately the goal of ourselves and of Porsche to support their factory drivers the best way possible.”

Finlay Ringer contributed to this report

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