Diuguid: Porsche 963 Updates Paying Dividends at Imola

Photo: Jurgen Tap/Porsche

Porsche’s off-season Evo joker has helped with the 963’s curb usage at Imola according to Porsche Penske Motorsport managing director Jonathan Diuguid, who is hoping for improved form compared to the FIA World Endurance Championship season opener in Qatar.

While the German manufacturer was unable to match the pace of Ferrari in the opening day of track action, the 963 showed better compliance over the 3.050-mile Autodromo di Imola Enzo e Dino Ferrari, which relies heavily on drivers utilizing the high curbing at sections of the circuit.

“We’re really happy with the curb usage, which is not been a strength of the 963 last year,” Diuguid told reporters prior to the start of FP3. “I think some of the updates we’ve made have helped with that.

“They’re able to be very aggressive on the curbs and our tire wear looked great. We’re going to do the best we can.”

Diuguid said the 963’s off-season joker, which focused around new front suspension components, is paying dividends on a number of tracks in both the WEC and IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship.

“Curbs, bumpy circuits, those kind of things, just giving us some ability to have some more compliance in the car that we didn’t have last year,” he explained.

“It definitely helped at Sebring and Long Beach. I think our performance in IMSA was a direct result of some of the joker updates and being able to maximize car performance.

“Also on the team side, we’re doing a really good job with our pre-event preparation on both organizations and using the tools at our disposal to show up prepared.

“I think that’s the biggest thing on these weekends, they may be long and we have three or four practice sessions, but they’re short if you show up and the cars are not driving well.

“Being able to show up on pace is good.”

Speaking with Sportscar365, Laurens Vanthoor agreed that the car’s overall setup has made a step forward at Imola compared to 2024.

“It’s definitely better than last year, for sure,” he said. “It’s probably partly due to updates and also our experience over the [last] 12 months.

“There’s been a lot of races between IMSA and WEC to help the further development of the all the dampers and so-on.

“It’s a mix of both but we’ve made a good improvement there.”

Despite the updates paying some dividends, Diuguid predicts another challenging WEC race for Porsche Penske, which finished 10th and 11th in February’s season-opening Qatar 1812km.

“We’re still around P5 or P6, based on what we saw in practice yesterday,” he said. “I think the Ferraris are still well out front of everyone, similar to what it was in Qatar. They’re doing a good job.

“We’re going to do our best on Sunday. Hopefully it’s a little bit better than what we did in Qatar and we can clean up the team-side mistakes.

“In general, we feel like we’re lacking pace still.”

When asked if there’s anything that can be carried over from the team’s so-far unbeaten record in the WeatherTech Championship from a strategy point of view, Diuguid said they’ll use all the “tools” at their disposal.

“The IMSA team is operating well and I think Sebring and Long Beach were results of good pit work and good strategy,” he said.

“The WEC program had good strategy in Qatar too. We were just backed into a box to where we had to try to triple-stint tires at the end of the race and it didn’t work out so we lost some spots there.

“In general, we’re a little bit further behind on pace over here than in IMSA. We’ll use all the tools we have at our disposal.”

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