Lotterer on “Very Unexpected” Second Place for No. 6 Porsche

Photo: Jurgen Tap/Porsche

Andre Lotterer said he and co-drivers Laurens Vanthoor and Kevin Estre’s second place finish in Sunday’s 6 Hours of Sao Paulo was a “very unexpected” result considering the No. 6 Penske Porsche 963’s early race dramas.

The trio extended their lead in the FIA World Endurance Championship with the runner-up result, which came after an opening hour clash between Vanthoor and the No. 12 Hertz Team JOTA Porsche of Will Stevens, who was penalized for the incident.

Vanthoor limped his Penske Porsche to the pits with a puncture, which initially put the car off-sequence on stops and in jeopardy of a points-paying finish.

“Immediately after the incident, the puncture, Laurens fought back and then I got in the car with semi-compound, the qualifying tires, which was not easy but we had to [use] them at some point,” Lotterer told Sportscar365.

“But we still managed to fight back. I think I went up to P4 or something.

“Then we kept going through our progression with Kevin in the car with the Hard tires and having good pace.

“The Full Course Yellow helped us a bit. Our bad luck turned a bit.”

The No. 6 car ended up completing the race on five stops, the same as the winning No. 7 Toyota GR010 Hybrid of Brendon Hartley, Ryo Hirakawa and Sebastien Buemi,

“It was very unexpected to fight back that strong,” Lotterer added. “I didn’t expect it because I thought, ‘OK, if we could maybe get into the points.

“It shows we’re doing a good job operation-wise and also the way we worked from the beginning of the weekend and came with a setup that was alright but we improved the car quite a bit. That was positive.

“Any situation we get thrown at we manage to extract the best out of it.

“It was a good team effort with our sister car also on podium. It’s good for the championship.”

Lotterer suggested that the Nos. 6 and 5 Porsches may have ended up swapping positions if the No. 5 car didn’t have to pit to replace its rear deck late in the running.

Even without the early race puncture, Lotterer said he was convinced they would have been unable to take the fight to the No. 7 Toyota, which scored a dominant win.

When asked if the Toyotas were in a different league on Sunday, Lotterer said: “Yeah, completely.”

“What can I say? Even if you optimize your best, that was clearly on a much higher level.

“It’s difficult to say because they did the whole race on the Mediums, we were kind of half-half. But Kevin was quite happy with the Hards in the end.

“I don’t think so, to be honest. I don’t know what they have but for sure their chassis on this track with the way everything was was on a higher level.”

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