Porsche pulls out North American Le Mans entries

Porsche has decided to pull the two North American entries out of this years Le mans 24 hour race, the two cars to run by CORE Autosport will not be travelling to France this year, reducing Porsche’s presence in the GTE Pro class to two cars only

Porsche. A.G. has operated four of its 911 RSRs in the French endurance classic since 2018, and had again planned to bring its two IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship machines to line up alongside its pair of regular FIA World Endurance Championship cars.

However, the due to the economic fallout from the global coronavirus pandemic, as well as concerns surrounding travel, have prompted Porsche to withdraw the two IMSA cars and focus just on its WEC-entered Team Manthey-run cars.

Porsche GTE Pro Class at the 2019 Le Mans 24 Hour

The two North American Porsches join the join a number off other teams in pulling out of the race this year, which has been pushed back from its usual date in June to September 19-20 because of the COVID-19 World crisis.

Nick Tandy, Earl Bamber and Matt Campbell had been due to drive the number 93 Porsche, while the sister number 94 car was to feature an all-French line-up of Patrick Pilet, Mathieu Jaminet and Julien Andlauer. There are no changes expected to the driver line-ups of the remaining Team Manthey Porsches.

Seven 911 RSR were built by Porsche Motorsport in Weissach for the 2017 motor racing season: Two for the Sports Car World Endurance Championship WEC, two for the IMSA SportsCar Championship, and three test vehicles. It takes four employees ten working days to build one 911 RSR. Since the roll-out in March 2016 to its first race in January 2017 at the Daytona 24-hour race, over 35,000 test kilometres have been covered on various racetracks with the new 911 RSR – that’s more than in the development of any other Porsche GT race car.

Porsche's decision to halve its GTE Pro class presence reduces the size of the class to only nine cars, with the remaining 911 RSR-19s joined by three Ferrari 488 GTEs (including one Risi Competizione-entered car), two Corvette C8.Rs and two Aston Martin Vantage GTEs.