Tandy: “High Hopes” for Porsche Penske’s Continued Success

Photo: Jake Galstad/IMSA

Porsche Penske Motorsport is entering this weekend’s Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring with “high spirits and high hopes” according to Nick Tandy, as the team looks to carry momentum from its first two races of the global endurance racing season.

The factory LMDh squad has been undefeated so far this year, following victory in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship season-opening Rolex 24 at Daytona, while also grabbing a breakthrough first win in FIA World Endurance Championship competition earlier this month in Qatar.

While Saturday’s around-the-clock enduro at Sebring will mark a significant departure from the ultra-smooth Lusail International Circuit, as well as the high-banked Daytona oval/road course, Tandy is upbeat on their level of preparation for the second round of the Michelin Endurance Cup.

“Obviously they are very different race tracks and what’s required out of the cars is different,” he explained. “Daytona being fast and the bigger difference being flat.

“Sebring, obviously, a lot of the way the car works and how fast the car is dictated on how good they are to ride the bumps.

“What we need out of the cars, and each manufacturer, how their cars handle these circuits, will be different.

“We have been to Sebring this year testing along with some of the other teams and we’ve obviously made progress from last year.

“It’s very difficult to tell from test stuff and see how we compare to others in that scenario.

“We really won’t know until the race starts. It’s a classic cliche. But we did see last year that maybe we struggled a bit more during the day in the race than we did in the evening.”

Tandy added: “Daytona to Qatar to Sebring, they’re all very different race tracks.

“The car is obviously performing very well at the moment. The team has got on top of a lot of things, so we’re hopeful. We’ve done our homework.

“There has been some changes in the BoP, so we’ll see. From my point of view, we go there in high spirits and high hopes because we know how prepared we are.”

Sebring also brings a certain level of uncertainty to the equation, given the high risk for incidents due to nearly 60 cars in four different classes packed around the 3.7-mile circuit.

“There’s lots of cars,” said Tandy. “The density of cars per mile at Sebring is pretty high.

“What also happens is you don’t get a lot of night running in the race, so the last two hours or so is when it gets dark.

“There isn’t a lot of time for drivers that maybe aren’t so experienced or haven’t seen it before to get into that phase of the race in going from day to night.

“It’s a tricky one. As we saw last year, it was interesting in the end but it didn’t work out well for three of the cars, and that was just in our class.

“We have a different class structure this year than we had to last year but there’s still going to be a lot of cars.

“The main thing is, you have to be in the race, on the lead lap, with a clean car in Hour 11-12 to have a chance at it.

“You think about these things all the way through race prep and through the beginning and all the way to the end of the race.”

Diuguid: Team Has to “Keep Looking Forward”

While riding the wave of victories to kick off the year, Porsche Penske Motorsport managing director Jonathan Diuguid has warned that factors outside of the team’s control could derail any winning team.

“The effort and time you put in doesn’t necessarily guarantee results or anything like that, either from a team organization or a driver perspective,” he said.

“Even looking at the first two races of 2024, I think it’s one decision or one choice by a driver and we [wouldn’t have] finished where we finished.

“It was a tight race in Daytona and in Qatar we had some late drama with some on-track contact.

“If one of those two situations went a slightly different way, it would have been a very different conversation.

“As a group, we have to be excited when everything comes together and we do succeed, like it was in Daytona in the No. 7 car group and like it was in Qatar with those guys in the No. 6 car.

“We’ve got to keep pushing but it’s one mistake away from the wheels falling off for a lack of a better description. So in general, we have to keep focus and keep looking forward.”

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