Porsche Motorsport has revealed more details about their upcoming LMDh programme in the FIA World Endurance Championship and the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship.
As previously announced, there will be two works cars run by Team Penske in both IMSA and the FIA WEC. The team will run under the Porsche Penske Motorsport banner.
The cars will be white and red, with the model designation 963. There will be a base in Mannheim for the FIA WEC team, while the IMSA team will be run out of Mooresville, North Carolina.
Porsche has confirmed their IMSA debut to be in January 2023, while the FIA WEC debut will be in Bahrain in November 2022 – but running out of competition.
The car is built by Canadian manufacturer Multimatic, and will have a 4,6 liter V8 bi-turbo engine. There will be a spec hybrid system on all LMDh cars in addition to that.
Photo: Porsche Motorsport
The team has already tested 7889 kilometers in places like Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, where several of the coming drivers has been behind the wheel.
These drivers are Felipe Nasr, Dane Cameron and Frederic Makowiecki. The latter was the very first driver to test the car. Nasr and Cameron has been part of the Team Penske LMP2 outfit this year, but will move their focus to the LMDh programme.
In addition to those three drivers, the other drivers confirmed are Mathieu Jaminet (who ran at the Le Mans test day for Team Penske), Matt Campbell, Andre Lotterer, Laurens Vanthoor, Kevin Estre, and Michael Christensen. The remaining drivers will be announced at a later stage.
So Lotterer will finally return to sportscars full time, after having raced Formula E for the last seasons, as an alternative series to his regular sportscar job.
Other than the 2×2 works cars, there will be privateers as well. These programmes will be announced in the coming days and weeks.
The LMDh cars will be racing in the Hypercar category in the FIA WEC, while the top category in IMSA will be named GTP.
