We Only Expect One Thing from Penske and the Porsche 963

In order to be anything but a disappointment, Porsche’s newest endurance-racing machine, the 963, must win the 24 Hours of Le Mans. The trouble is it was born into the most competitive field since the mid-Eighties. For the 2022 race, only Toyota, Alpine, and Glickenhaus entered top-tier hypercars. For the 2023 edition, Cadillac, Peugeot, and—wait for it—Ferrari will also be gunning for the win. That’s one very high bar to clear.

This story originally appeared in Volume 16 of Road & Track.

Every top-class Porsche prototype has won the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Stuttgart has 19 overall victories, the single most impressive record for an auto-racing manufacturer, and it illustrates more than a half-century of improbable consistency.

Porsche’s overall Le Mans wins stretch back to 1970, but its recent history at la Sarthe is one of dominance. The 919 Hybrid, the only Porsche prototype to fight for a Le Mans win in this millennium, raced for just four seasons; it won Le Mans and the FIA World Endurance Championship three times each. After its retirement, the 919 Hybrid became the barnstorming 919 Evo. That car, freed of all regulations, lapped the Nürburg­ring in 5 minutes, 19.55 seconds, obliterating ­Stefan Bellof’s long-held 1983 record in a Porsche 956 by nearly a minute.

The 963 is a departure for Porsche, as it isn’t all built in-house. Prototypes that adhere to the new LMDh rules are built around a next-­generation LMP2-class carbon-fiber tub—Porsche’s is from Multimatic—and a spec hybrid system. Manufacturers have relatively free rein with body design and the engine. The 963 uses a twin-turbo 4.6-liter V-8, one with roots in the V-8 from the RS Spyder, Porsche’s championship-winning LMP2 rocket ship of the Aughts. The new engine uses low boost pressure to produce relatively even torque distribution and combines with the hybrid system for a peak output of 671 hp, the limit for the class. The 963’s design incorporates elements of road cars into a sleek, timeless look, with headlights below the fenders and a taillight bar reminiscent of the current 911.

Urs Kuratle has been with Porsche since the early days of the 919 program. He now serves as the director of factory racing for the 963. When Porsche ran the 919 operation on its own, the program was roughly 200 people strong. Now, with outside firms providing the chassis and spec parts, Kuratle cannot estimate how many people are involved in building and running the car.

“It’s difficult to say. We have the two Penske Porsche programs in two facilities, and then we have the development facilities in Weissach, and we have all these people we don’t know working at Bosch, Williams, and Xtrac for the standard components in the development areas for those companies,” Kuratle says. “Overall, the number of people may be bigger than it used to be in LMP1, but they’re not serving one team or OEM. They’re serving four of them and customers.”

The complexity of the supply chain sets up no small challenge, even for the winningest brand in Le Mans history. That’s why Porsche partnered with the most powerful force in American racing.

Team Penske’s success cannot be overstated. Roger Penske, a former racing driver from Ohio, built a team around the multifaceted racer Mark Donohue in the late Sixties. A half century on, Penske’s team has won the Indy 500 18 times, the IndyCar championship 17 times, the NASCAR Cup Series championship three times, and the Australian V-8 Supercars championship three times. Penske has often aligned with manufacturers in sports-car racing, including with Porsche for its early-Seventies 917 Can-Am and mid-Aughts RS Spyder. The team most recently competed with Acura in IMSA’s DPi category, winning eight races and two titles over three seasons.

Penske himself, now one of the wealthiest men in the automotive industry after decades leading both the team and a sprawling corporate empire, has a reputation for running his team with the attention to detail and resources of the New York Yankees’ management. Drivers must maintain a clean look. Perfectly pressed white short-sleeve button-down shirts are the team’s signature attire. Haulers are wrapped in black, red, and chrome, always shined to an impressive finish. If you’ve followed any top-level American racing series over the past 50 years, you know a Penske-­run team on sight.

While Penske’s success is largely confined to American racing, his team is responsible for the 963’s factory effort in IMSA and the World Endurance Championship. The challenge required significant restructuring and investment.