JDC-Miller Motorsports has announced the two drivers, who will debut in their brand-new Porsche 963 in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship.
It will super-experienced Mike Rockenfeller and the young talent Tijmen van der Helm, who will make his racing debut at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca on 14 May 2023.
The team was announced as one of the very first privateer Porsche teams back in 2022, but it quickly became clear, that the delivery dates of the new race cars, would be somewhere around late spring, no matter what privateer outfit you were talking about (i.e. JDC, JOTA and Proton).
Rockenfeller has plenty of experience in fast sportscars. He was part of the Porsche GT programme, until Audi Sport took him into their LMP1 programme, where he was part of the 24 Hours of Le Mans-winning crew in 2010. He had a massive accident at the very same race in 2021, and moved focus towards DTM, which he won in 2013. He then was “stuck” in DTM, and never really got back to the LMP world. He did, however, keep himself warm in the Daytona 24 Hours race in the DP category, before moving to Corvette and their GTE/GTLM programme. He was recently chosen as a driver for the special Garage 56 NASCAR, who will compete at this year’s 24 Hours of Le Mans.
Van der Helm made his top sportscar racing debut in 2022, where he raced for TDS Racing x Vaillante in the European Le Mans Series, plus the 24 Hours of Le Mans. This year he races for Panis Racing in the ELMS, which had their season debut in Barcelona last week. But he also raced the Daytona 24 hours and Sebring 12 hours for JDC-Miller Motorsports in the LMP3 category.
It will be super interesting to follow the progress of the team, and to see what they are able to do against the already well-established teams, with almost 38 hours of race running, plus all the testing kilometres.
The next round of the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship will be at the before mentioned WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca on 14 May 2023.
