Vanthoor, Estre “On a Good Roll” With “Clear Goal” of GTP Title

Photo: Jordan Lensson/Porsche

Laurens Vanthoor believes the No. 6 Porsche Penske Motorsport crew have been on a “good roll” as of late, with the “clear goal” of securing the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship GTP title.

Vanthoor and co-driver Kevin Estre enter this weekend’s StubHub Monterey SportsCar Championship fourth in the points standings, although effectively third, with fellow Porsche factory driver Laurin Heinrich, who sits in second, due to miss a race because of his GT3 commitments.

While having just missed the podium in the season opening Rolex 24 at Daytona, Vanthoor, Estre and third driver Matt Campbell finished second in the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring, amid a controversial team orders dispute and most recently finished third on the streets of Long Beach, despite their Porsche 963 being nearly 100 pounds heavier than at Sebring.

“I think we’ve been on a good roll, [the] last couple of races, results,” said Vanthoor.

“For us, the goal is clearly to try and win the championship at the end of the year. And in order to do that, you need to be consistent and minimize mistakes. That’s what we’ve done so far. So hopefully we can, can continue that trend and we’ll see.”

Vanthoor and the Porsche Penske squad tested at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca prior to Long Beach, running at IMSA’s then-mandated 1,100 kg minimum weight, which has since been reduced to 1,084 for this weekend’s two-hour and 40-minute contest.

All GTP class entries, except for the Aston Martin Valkyrie, which remains at the 1,300 kg baseline, have seen minimum weight reductions since Long Beach.

When asked by Sportscar365 on how the weight change could affect their chances this weekend at the fast and flowing natural terrain circuit, Vanthoor said he’s “curious” especially because of their podium result at Long Beach.

“I’m hoping not to be surprised in a bad way in Laguna,” he said. But I mean, the test we did wasn’t too bad. It’s obviously still tough to work on, and you can clearly obviously feel that weight in the car, and that makes sense.

“It is what it is. We have to deal with it and make sure we work towards the best possible outcome.

“Whether you can talk about it or not, I don’t really care. It’s, for me, something I can’t change.

“Nobody’s going to take weight out of my car if I complain about it or not. So I try and not spend energy on it and just do the best with the tools we’ve been given and all the rest is up to other people on our team to figure out. We’ll see. Hopefully, we can be up front and have a consistent group result.”

Vanthoor said it was hard to judge their performance at the Laguna test earlier this month.

“It was only us and another brand and there’s no official timing, and you don’t know what everybody’s doing,” he said.

“One thing which is different in the past, five years ago, the asphalt was still the old one, and you had a huge tire degradation. Now you have the new asphalt, but that still plays a bit a bit of a role.

“I think it’s getting the basics right. There’s nothing extremely special or way different on Laguna than maybe other standard tracks, just getting the basic ride of setup long runs and tire degradation strategy and, I think that’s the most important.”

Vanthoor: “No Downside” to Not Being Recent IMSA Regulars 

Despite Vanthoor’s last full WeatherTech Championship season having come in 2021, when he won the GTD class title in Pfaff Motorsport’s Porsche 911 GT3 R, the Belgian believes the recent lack-of-experience at some circuits, including Laguna Seca, won’t come as a detriment to their title pursuit.

“This is actually going to be the first normal race for this season,” he said. “So actually, I asked our engineer at the sim last week, ‘How does this work actually again?’

“It’s strategy in the normal way. For me, the normal IMSA season started in Long Beach. Obviously, Daytona and Sebring are quite special. I think Kevin and myself… we obviously know what to expect at those races.

“We can say we’re not IMSA regulars for the last couple of years. I don’t think there’s any downside.

“We have our engineering team from WEC last year, so we had the collaboration and stuff. There’s stuff we need to adapt [to], and we are still adapting a little bit to some, some maybe IMSA specifics, in terms of setup or whatever, the tracks. But I’m sure we’re getting there.”

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