Interim report 1, FIA World Endurance Championship WEC, round 4, 24 Hours of Le Mans (France)

The three Porsche 963s of the Porsche Penske Motorsport works team showed a strong performance in the opening phase of the 24 Hours of Le Mans. In the first four hours of the race, Felipe Nasr in the number 75 and Michael Christensen in the sister car with the number 5 were partly in the lead. The hybrid prototype with starting number 6 claims second place after the early phase. Meanwhile, the Hertz Team Jota car, which was identical in construction, put on an impressive race to catch up. In the GTE-Am category, three Porsche 911 RSR worked their way up to the front.

In front of a large crowd of more than 300,000 spectators, a total of 62 vehicles started the race to mark the 100th anniversary of the 24 Hours of Le Mans at 4:00 p.m. on Saturday. Immediately before the 91st edition of the long-distance classic was released, rain showers made for difficult conditions in parts of the 13.626-kilometre circuit. After an accident involving a competitor from the hypercar class, the safety car was deployed for more than 30 minutes after just one lap.

Thanks to a clever strategy and strong performances by the factory drivers, the three Porsche 963 from Porsche Penske Motorsport made up a few positions in the first hour of the race. After two hours, Michael Christensen in the number 5 was in the lead for almost 30 minutes. Felipe Nasr in the racing car, which is driving for the 75th anniversary of Porsche sports cars with starting number 75, was consistently in the top 5. Meanwhile, the number 6 experienced a small setback: Due to a pressure loss in a tire, Laurens Vanthoor had to pit for a premature trigger a wheel change. The car that the Belgian shares with Frenchman Kévin Estre and German André Lotterer was around a minute behind the leaders after two and a half hours. However, the renewed use of the safety car reduced this gap to just a few seconds. All three works cars are within striking distance of the leading vehicle.

"The starting phase was extremely eventful with safety car phases, slow zones, yellow flags and many incidents," summarizes Urs Kuratle. The Head of Works Motorsport LMDh adds: “Our three cars are in the leading group, have no technical defects and no scratches. That's the most important thing after this turbulent start. It's getting wild. I hope that we will now get a phase with a dry track so that the race can run a little more normally.”

The Porsche 963 of the customer team Hertz Team Jota did not set a lap time in qualifying and therefore had to start the race from the end of the field. However, works driver António Félix da Costa quickly gained a lot of ground – also benefiting from an early safety car phase.

Heavy rain on parts of the route then threw the field of participants upside down again and led to several slips. This triggered another long safety car phase. After a little more than four hours of racing, the number 6 Porsche was in second place behind the lead car, the sister car with the 75 was fifth, the Jota Porsche was sixth and the racing car with starting number 5 was tenth.

In the GTE-Am class, the Porsche 911 RSR fielded by customer teams impressed with an extremely strong start phase. After about an hour, five nine-elevens occupied the first five positions in the classification. Afterwards, however, some crews were very unlucky. The two 911 RSR driven by Proton Competition (number 16) and Iron Lynx collided while the number 86 car, which was in the lead, spun into the crash barriers in the heavy rain. The number 77 Dempsey-Proton Racing driver was involved in an incident involving an LMP2 prototype through no fault of his own. After four hours, the Iron Dames and Project1 – AO race cars occupy positions one and two. Proton Competition with starting number 911 followed in third place with, among others, Hollywood star Michael Fassbender from Ireland at the wheel.

Driver comments on the starting phase
Michael Christensen (Porsche 963 #5): “Wet track, safety car, slow zones, cold tyres, dirty tires – everything was there in my first stint and there was a lot going on! Nevertheless, I kept a cool head at all times and worked my way up the field with some nice maneuvers. Overall it was quite fun, but we still have a lot ahead of us.”

Laurens Vanthoor (Porsche 963 #6): “These weren't easy stints under difficult conditions. In the first two hours I made up a lot and was able to keep up a pretty good pace. At the end of the second stint there were some vibrations that will hopefully be a thing of the past after the wheel change. I wish that we can go the distance without incident.”

Felipe Nasr (Porsche 963 #75): “The first stints went well. It was a great feeling to be in the top group right away. I think some cars were struggling with quite a bit of tire degradation. This led to different strategies: Some teams changed all the wheels straight away, others just the tires on one side of the vehicle – just like us. Our car was running really well, but there was a small problem with the wipers when it started to rain. Hopefully we can get that out of the way quickly, because we will definitely need the wipers more often in this race.”

António Félix da Costa (Porsche 963 #38):“At the start we had a lot of cars in front of us because we had to line up in 60th place out of 62 cars. But I quickly got through the large group of GTE-Am participants immediately after the start of the race. Our car is really fast. We now have to stay out of all the adversity as the process progresses, then something very good can come of it.”

Matteo Cairoli (Porsche 911 RSR #56): “The starting phase went perfectly. I drove our car from 15th to the top of our class. The 911 RSR ran fantastically well. We observed the development of the weather very closely, but were still surprised by a heavy shower. It's really unpredictable. I have my fingers crossed for my teammates PJ and Gunnar.”