Porsche’s Customer 963 Options “Wide Open” for 2025

Photo: Porsche

Porsche is open to the possibility of building additional 963s for customers next year, although has stressed that a final decision, dictated on customer interest and grid availability, has not yet been made.

The German manufacturer, in the second year with its LMDh car, currently supports a total of five customer cars split between the FIA World Endurance Championship and IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, although is set to lose two with Hertz Team JOTA’s expected switch to Cadillac’s factory Hypercar program.

With those two chassis, owned by private collectors linked to the British squad, unlikely to be put into race action next year, it could open the door for further cars to be produced.

However, Porsche Motorsport boss Thomas Laudenbach said that a number of factors are currently at play.

“The point is that first of all we need to know what our actual customers are doing,” Laudenbach told selected reporters in last weekend’s WEC round in Sao Paulo. “So they need make their decisions.

“The next thing is that if there are more interested, it’s about do they get an entry. This you have to ask the ACO.

“If you look at it, they extended the field up to 40 cars. But you know there’s going to be some more cars coming. There are probably some manufacturers that are in right now with one car that will be there with two cars.

“So in the end it comes down to how many entries are left. It’s not that much probably. Probably not even [two]. But that’s not my job.”

Porsche LMDh factory director Urs Kuratle added: “We are in discussions with all of the customers. If the situation thinks we should or need to sell some more, we will sell some more. It’s not decided yet.

“There would be cars available. It’s not that we’ve built the cars already, but anyways, chassis are available and parts are available. That’s a question of demand.”

While Laudenbach nor Kuratle would put a number on potential new cars, Sportscar365 understands that Porsche would likely be prepared to supply up to two additional 963s, which would theoretically replace the current JOTA entries.

When asked if JOTA’s expected move would open up engineering capacity and support, Kuratle said “that’s fair to say.”

He added: “If JOTA will leave, then the customer support has some capacity and we have to see how we deal with it, whether that’s replaced by a different customer or not we don’t know. That’s the discussion we’re in at the moment.”

Proton Competition team boss Christian Ried, who currently has a customer 963 each in the WEC and WeatherTech Championship, said he’d ideally like to expand to run two cars in both series next year.

“But also we need the customers and the sponsors for it,” he admitted. “It’s always better running two cars than one.”

Ried downplayed the possibility of acquiring the JOTA cars, indicating he would likely need new chassis from Porsche to make his team’s goal a reality. “It should be available,” he said.

While Ried said a decision will come on Proton’s 2025 efforts in the “next few weeks or months” fellow Porsche privateer JDC-Miller Motorsports has also expressed a desire to expand its program to a potential two-car GTP class program in the WeatherTech Championship.

Kuratle, meanwhile, has credited its three current customer teams for helping in the car’s overall development over the last 14 months, with Porsche being the only LMDh manufacturer to make cars available to privateer squads.

“We did big steps in reliability and that’s also thanks to the more kilometers we can do with all of the customers,” he said.

“We have a couple of ideal scenarios [for 2025]. There’s not one ideal scenario. It’s all wide open.”

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