Estre: Consistency Has Kept Porsche Drivers Atop Standings

Photo: Drew Gibson/Porsche

Porsche Penske Motorsport’s consistency through the FIA World Endurance Championship season has kept the No. 6 Porsche 963 trio atop the drivers’ world championship despite lacking pace to rivals Toyota and Ferrari, reckons Kevin Estre.

The Frenchman and co-drivers Laurens Vanthoor and Andre Lotterer head into this weekend’s penultimate round of the season with a 12-point lead over Toyota Gazoo Racing’s Kamui Kobayashi and Nyck de Vries and the Ferrari AF Corse trio of Antonio Fuoco, Nicklas Nielsen and Miguel Molina, who are all tied on 113 points.

While having led the championship since their controlling victory in the season-opening Qatar 1812km in March, the No. 6 crew’s points advantage has been reduced in recent races that were won by both Toyota and Ferrari.

Estre believes it will make their championship chances “tough” with Sunday’s Six Hours of Fuji and the extra points-paying 8 Hours of Bahrain finale still to play for.

“We are definitely knowing they are super strong and they are going to be hard to beat,” he told Sportscar365. “They’ve been like that the whole year. Qatar was the only race where we’ve been faster than anyone else.

“Everywhere else, we’ve been the second or the third fastest.

“With our consistency, we ended up here, not with our pace. This is quite clear for everyone that looks at the lap time average and all of that.

“Of course Toyota was super strong in Sao Paulo. We managed to a very good result there with a bit of luck and a good race.

“But in terms of pace, we were not there compared to them. Again in Austin, they were faster, and Ferrari as well.”

Estre added: “We are on the back foot in terms of performance since Imola, really.

“Le Mans and every race, really, we’ve been slower than them. It’s just we’ve scored more points on an average because we do better races than them.

“Most of the time they’re unlucky or they make mistakes. We tend to do less [mistakes] than that.

“Let’s see. We still have two races. I think this race can be good for us. But obviously Toyota has won nine of the last ten races here, so it’s going to be tough but we’ll give it our all.”

The No. 6 Porsche crew return to the site of their breakout race from last year, having led two-thirds of the Fuji round en route to a third place finish.

Estre believes that performance helped kickstart its 2024 campaign.

“Last year was our best race [in WEC] for sure and it really started [the] development on the setup and understanding on the car, this race, and we’ve built up on that,” he said.

“I think we have a very good baseline from last year, although our setup has evolved a bit throughout the year.

“This is the first race where we arrived without having testing and being pretty sure our base setup will be ok.

“Just with the race feeling we had last year, the balance we had last year and the [evolution] we had in the year, I think we came here quite confident that we will be somewhere.

“Austin was harder and Interlagos was harder, just feeling-wise and confidence-wise.”

Kuratle: Manufacturers’, Drivers’ Championships “Equal” to Porsche

While still out front of the drivers’ title race, Porsche lost the lead of the Hypercar manufacturers’ world championship to Toyota last time out at COTA and now trail the Japanese brand by 11 points, with Ferrari only eight markers further behind in third.

With multiple points scenarios still at play, it could result in split world titles for drivers and manufacturer, although one is not more important over the other according to Porsche LMDh factory director Urs Kuratle.

“It’s nothing to balance; they’re equal,” he told Sportscar365. “I don’t like to rank those two championships. We have to win both. It’s as easy as that.

“If we can only get one, we are happy with that one.

“The manufacturers’ championship is important for Porsche. But the drivers’ championship is also important for Porsche.

“Long story short, I cannot rank it.”

Estre, however, said that bringing home the manufacturers’ title to Weissach is “for sure” more important as a whole.

“But if we do a good race, it’s going to be a good race for Porsche, for the manufacturer [championship],” he said.

“For us, we just have to think about our race and doing the best result we can.

“If there is anything within the race to think about or swap or do an order or something to help Porsche, I think everyone is aware that this could be the case.

“Being in our position, leading the championship, I think we should just do our race, score maximum points and if we have an order from Porsche, we will respect it.

“This has more of an effect on the cars that are behind us in the championship.

“We’ll just try to do our best and definitely not try to hit any other Porsche, which is the normal thing.

“It doesn’t change much. We just think about the championship in general, both championships together.”

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