MSA, WEC Weekend: Porsche Penske Motorsports Loaded for Bear

• The WEC will be making its first appearance at Imola, Italy, for its six-hour race.

• On Saturday in Long Beach, Porsche Penske Motorsport will be defending last year’s inaugural Porsche 963 race victory and a tie for the current points lead in the WeatherTech Championship.

• Want to talk resources? In total, 132 people will staff the four Porsche Penske Motorsport Porsche 963 cars racing globally this weekend.
  

Has Porsche and its factory team at Penske stolen a march on their competition in the WeatherTech Championship and the World Endurance Championship?

A year ago, Porsche Penske Motorsport was trying to keep up with its competition following a mediocre Rolex 24 at Daytona and a disastrously unlucky finish at the Sebring 12-hour.

The customer car program, meanwhile, was beginning to look like a boondoggle during the struggle to produce cars. A miserable three-car factory outing in the WEC’s crown jewel at Le Mans, where the LMDh car of Cadillac finished on the podium, was painful.

What a difference a year makes on a weekend when both IMSA’s WeatherTech series and the WEC are in action.

On Saturday in Long Beach, Porsche Penske Motorsport will be defending last year’s inaugural Porsche 963 race victory and a tie for the current points lead in the WeatherTech Championship.

At Imola on Sunday, the Porsche Penske team will defend its points lead in the World Endurance Championship after an impressive season-opening victory at Qatar, where the two factory 963s finished on the podium along with the customer car of Hertz Team Jota.

Where it won on strategy last year at Long Beach by not changing tires on the lone pit stop in the 100-minute race, this year Porsche Penske Motorsport arrives loaded for bear to compete against the other eight LMDh entries head-to-head in a race that includes 17 GTD entries.

Defending winners Mathieu Jaminet and Nick Tandy will drive the No. 6 entry for the Porsche factory team; winning Rolex 24 at Daytona co-drivers Dane Cameron and Felipe Nasr will pilot the No. 7 entry.

“Where the strategy obviously worked out for us last year, it was born out of a deficit in performance,” said Jonathan Diuguid, the managing director at Porsche Penske Motorsport. After testing for bumpy circuits, including at the Sebring International Raceway, Diuguid expects to be fighting for the victory on outright pace this year. Because Michelin is bringing a softer tire with more degradation, he said, getting to the finish on one set of tires is unlikely.