Hindman: Wright Leveraging SRO Experience With New Porsche

Photo: Jamey Price/Wright Motorsports

Trent Hindman said Wright Motorsports has been leveraging the experience gained in early season Fanatec GT World Challenge America powered by AWS races in helping its IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship team come to grips with the new Type-992 Porsche 911 GT3 R.

The Ohio-based squad fields the new-for-2023 Porsche in both series, with Hindman and Alan Brynjolfsson spearheading the VOLT Racing-backed effort in the IMSA GTD class and Jan Heylen and Charlie Luck co-driving a Type-992 Porsche with Wright in GTWC America.

While yet to produce a top-five finish this season, former GTD champion Hindman said he’s been pleased with the progress made off-the-track since last month’s Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach and has “much more” confidence heading into WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca this weekend.

“Obviously it’s a new championship for VOLT Racing,” Hindman said. “It’s very new to Alan, maybe not so much to me, but a new platform of Porsche in the [Type] 992, which does seem to be quite a bit of a departure from the previous generation 991.2.

“There’s a lot of learning all around. For Wright Motorsports, a longtime Porsche team, it’s definitely a challenge trying to learn what this new generation car likes and doesn’t like.

“But I think over the last couple of weeks since Long Beach, we’ve collected a lot of data, especially with our teammates running in a different championship in the same platform of car.

“We collected a lot of data. We have a little bit better understanding of what we need to do in terms of setup approach and concept moving forward.

“That’s what more-or-less caught us out between Sebring and Long Beach. We roll off the truck well and then as the track evolves and our competition starts finding more performance throughout the weekend, we tend to just stay where we unloaded.

“There’s much more confidence in that scenario now rolling into Laguna Seca.

“This is a race track that I’ve been fortunate to have some good results at in the past and Alan and I last year winning the [Michelin Pilot Challenge] GS race. We know he’s very good around Laguna Seca as an Am.

“I’m looking forward to another strong performance this year out of him as well.”

Hindman said the Type-992’s wheel speed sensor issue, which has since been patched, has not played a factor in the learning curve in the early season races.

“That really wasn’t much of an issue for us,” he said. “Obviously with our sister team running a GT3 R in a different championship, they’ve had the opportunity to run the updated package from Porsche.

“They found a minor performance gain. But fortunately none of the Wright Motorsports cars didn’t really seem to encounter any of the issues with this wheel speed sensor problem.

“We have the updates. We’re not expecting a huge performance gain out of it, judging by past events. But that doesn’t mean that there’s much more for us to be gained on our own, just with our own setup approach and approach.”

Hindman added: “It still is an extremely drivable car and it’s got a ton of potential. It’s just a matter to each individual team to find that drivability and performance.

“I think one of the items that’s been tripping us, and maybe some of the other customer teams up, is that we’re approaching this car quite a lot differently than maybe what you would have in the past with the previous generation GT3 Rs.

“What we’re realizing is that there’s no need to make it more complicated than it needs to be. I know that goes for anything and anybody in any car but especially for us.

“There’s been a lot of paralysis by analysis, for lack of a better term.

“Simplifying, nailing down the basics of what makes a Porsche 911 work, is our game plan moving forward.

“Obviously the Wright Motorsports guys know a thing or two about how to do that. And just like anybody else in a brand-new platform of car, there’s going to be a constant evolution but it takes time.”

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