Porsche Penske Almost Perfect in Title Chases

The pickings are slim, if not petit, for the teams and drivers competing with Porsche Penske Motorsport for manufacturer and driving titles at the Petit Le Mans on Saturday, the final round of the WeatherTech Championship.

Porsche will clinch the manufacturers crown when one of its Porsche 963s leaves the starting grid behind the pace car. In the driver’s championship, the pilots of Penske’s brace of Porsche 963s lead the standings by a country mile.

To win the driving title, Felipe Nasr and Dane Cameron need only finish eighth or higher in their No. 7 Porsche 963 to beat teammates Nick Tandy and Mathieu Jaminet in the team’s No. 6.

Nothing is taken for granted over the 10 hours of hill-and-dale racing in North Georgia, where weather is anticipated to be picture perfect despite Hurricane Milton ripping through Florida. “Petit Le Mans will be a massive challenge with so many cars racing on a relatively small, high-speed circuit like Road Atlanta,” said Cameron, referring to the maximum entry of 54 cars in four classes. “But we’ve put ourselves in a good position to win the drivers’ titles.”

Nasr fought through a power steering failure in the previous round at Indy, which positioned the No. 7 drivers for the title despite a seventh-place finish. In a bizarre twist, the No. 6 drivers finished third on the track at Indy’s six-hour, but were penalized for a minor wiring infraction found during a post-race inspection that had not been homologated and were dropped to 10th place.

They might otherwise have come into the Petit only 14 points behind their teammates instead of 124. (The No. 7 Porsche was not inspected.)

Other manufacturers still have a shot at the Michelin Endurance Cup, whose scoring system dishes out points for mid-race stages as well as the finish at the WeatherTech’s five endurance races. But all the time-honored heavy-duty hardware is very likely headed home with Porsche and Penske.

Team Penske positions itself as one of the most successful teams in all professional sports, having won 44 major championships entering the Petit, a tally which includes 13 sports car crowns.

In addition to the IMSA titles on the line at the Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta, the Porsche Penske combo will start November’s final round of the World Endurance Championship in Bahrain as the leader in the manufacturer and driver standings (Laurens Vanthoor, Andre Lotterer, and Kevin Estre).

How did this team, whose American headquarters are in Mooresville, North Carolina, and whose European headquarters are in Mannheim, Germany, become such a steamroller?

Porsche out-scaled its rivals in its second year of fielding two-car teams from either side of the Atlantic as well as selling cars to customer teams. In addition to Penske running mid-race strategies designed to maximize the team’s chances, the wealth of data from multiple entries produced better development on the Porsche 963. Counting privateer Jota’s win at Spa in Belgium, the LMDh Porsche has won 10 races in two seasons under two separate systems of Balance of Performance (BoP) in IMSA and the WEC.

A one-two finish by BMW at Indy showed that the co-mingling of the WEC and IMSA data can be beneficial to development. But BMW took a different approach with its in-house factory team operating in the WEC for the first time this season and the Rahal Letterman Lanigan team fielding its M V8 Hybrids in IMSA starting last year.

Although budgets are not publicly shared, it’s likely that Porsche has outspent its rivals in the last two seasons. When Porsche sought an edge in power, for example, the company pursued a flat crank engine option and tested it extensively. When it produced too much vibration in the long wheelbase LMDh, the company simply shelved the project.

No public explanation has been forthcoming, but the split between Cadillac and Chip Ganassi Racing after the 2024 season may have resulted from budget talks. Discussions likely came down to Ganassi proposing for him to run two Cadillac V-Series.Rs in IMSA and two in the WEC with a budget commensurate to what the Porsche Penske team is spending.

Instead, Cadillac recently confirmed that WTRAndretti will field two Caddys in IMSA in addition to the Action Express entry and Jota will represent the manufacturer with two cars in the WEC.

To win the drivers’ crown, Cadillac Racing’s Sebastien Bourdais and Renger van der Zande need to win the points awarded for the pole and finish first in the Petit while hoping the No. 7 Penske Porsche of Nasr and Cameron finishes last in the 11-car GTP field. Even then, the margin would be one point.