Christian Ried's team's private Porsche 963 contested the final three races of the FIA World Endurance Championship and IMSA SportsCar Championship last season, with a view to a full season in both series in 2024, starting from the series opener American at Daytona at the end of the month.
Earlier this week it was announced that Bruni and his partner Neel Jani will be joined by Romain Dumas and Alessio Picariello for the Florida 24 Hours, with the latter pair driving the car for the first time during pre-test Roar Before the 24 event next week.
“The Roar will be like a shakedown for the Proton team, which has not raced the 963 since the 2023 WEC final in Bahrain,” said Bruni speaking to Motorsport.com.
“It's all new again this year. We haven't done any tests or anything, not even a seat test or anything like that since Bahrain, so it's all a question mark.”
“My teammate Romain will also be back from the Dakar when the Roar starts, so it will be challenging, I would say. But that's how it is, we can't change things.”
Photo by: Porsche
#99 Proton Competition Porsche 963: Gianmaria Bruni, Harry Tincknell, Neel Jani
On the Proton team's first outing with a prototype at Daytona last year, Bruni won the LMP2, when teammate James Allen pipped the Crowdstrike by APR car driven by Ben Hanley to victory by 0.016s in the sprint to the finish line .
“We return to Daytona in a very similar situation to last year, with new mechanics and engineers committed to the program, but the team has everything in order,” referring to the encouraging end to 2023.
Together with Jani and Harry Tincknell, the Roman achieved the program's first GTP podium in the final round of the Petit Le Mans, which was a nice response to a strange seatbelt problem that derailed a good run during the 6 Hours of Fuji of the WEC.
“That was definitely a good team result and we were very happy, especially after Fuji. It shows that Proton can be there even with limited time working on the car.”
“It's always good to have good preparation, but in the end in these endurance races, anything can happen and especially when you are in America and the MSA, when there are so many categories together and there are so many neutralizations in the race.”
“Anything can happen up until the checkered flag. That's also the beauty of IMSA, that you always have a chance, wherever you are, whatever your starting position, you can always have a chance to do something if you're in the group dizzy.”
Proton will not defend its LMP2 class victory, but will field a Ford Mustang GT3 throughout the season in the GTD class, with Giammarco Levorato and Corey Lewis joined by new Ford works driver Dennis Olsen and team veteran Ryan Hardwick at Daytona.
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