Porsche Penske Motorsport's historic victory at the 24 Hours of Daytona has raised expectations for the 963 ahead of the 2024 season, but it wasn't all sunshine and roses in Florida.
Behind the scenes the team's engineering brains and its drivers saved what could have been a crushing defeat.
After an extremely disappointing debut for the 963 at Daytona last year, plagued by hybrid battery and gearbox issues, IMSA's 2024 season opener was relatively trouble-free, save for the #6 car, which is placed in fourth place, penalized for “failure to respect the parameters imposed by the powertrain”.
A further 963, including customer cars, received warnings for the same problem, but were not forced to face penalties after software “fixes” were identified and rolled out across all four cars to prevent a repeat.
At the end of the 24 Hours, Porsche LMDh program director Urs Kuratle was asked about the problem that caused the #6 car to be penalized and explained the following.
“It was basically power produced when the car was pushed, especially towards the Bus Stop chicane. We had some peaks that were too much for the system, to put it that way. Corrections were made and that was it.”
This allowed Felipe Nasr to get the job done on track and beat pre-event favorite Cadillac by 2″ after a difficult day.
#7 Team Penske Motorsport Porsche 963: Dane Cameron, Felipe Nasr, Matt Campbell, Josef Newgarden
Photo by: Michael L. Levitt / Motorsport Images
Furthermore, company bigwig Michael Steiner, member of the executive board for development at Porsche AG, was able to collect the teams' trophy on the podium as the brand recorded its 19th overall success. Pats on the back for everyone in Stuttgart.
In the days following the race, we had the opportunity to question the general director of PPM, Jonathan Diuguid, and Raul Prados, the chief engineer of the winning car #7, delving deeper into the matter.
“For some reason, car #6 was the first to have problems, so it was affected, while the other was not. We intervened to avoid repeating the same mistake twice,” Diuguid said.
Prados added: “We did not see the problems, but we were aware that they were occurring on the #6, and the two cars are exactly identical. We have taken precautions, so the problems seen on the #6 car were resolved before they occurred. they would check on the other”.
When asked why it happened to one and not the other, Prados replied: “I'm not sure, it's probably a question of timing? I can't explain it because the same conditions could have happened on our car. I can't explain why happened.”
#7 Team Penske Motorsport Porsche 963: Dane Cameron, Felipe Nasr, Matt Campbell, Josef Newgarden
Photo by: Jake Galstad / Motorsport Images
Diuguid explained the complexity of the systems, used to limit the amount of energy regenerated and distributed through the common Bosch MGU-Ks that all GTP-Class cars use.
“All these controls and everything are extremely complex and so certain scenarios need to happen. Whether it's a brake lock or one of the drivers hits a curb at the Bus Stop chicane, it's things like that that can breach the system control”.
“So once it occurred on the #6, we tried to analyze the problem and Raul and the other race engineers liaised with the operations room to put countermeasures in place and make sure the drivers were prepared.”
“I'm sure Raul has had myriad conversations with Matt [Campbell] and Dane [Cameron] before they got in the car, telling them what to avoid and to make sure the settings were a certain way, and things like that.”
“Obviously we didn't plan on getting violations and three Stop&Go penalties on car #6, because we had never experienced these scenarios. So, it was just a matter of reacting, having understood why it happened, and making sure we take countermeasures as quickly as possible.
“One of the main points was that performance was taken away with these, because we had to give wider margins to the control limits; that's still something we're trying to analyze.”
#7 Team Penske Motorsport Porsche 963: Dane Cameron, Felipe Nasr, Matt Campbell, Josef Newgarden
Photo by: Bob Meyer
While in everyday life we are used to taking the time to load software updates onto our smartphones and computers, there was no need to stop the 963s or reboot their systems, something that plagued this category in last year's pre-race testing. year.
All the software was already programmed into the car's electronic brain, but the correct settings had to be selected by the drivers in the cockpit via steering wheel controls.
“Once we understood where the problem was coming from, the first thing to do was to try to help the pilots as much as possible,” Prados added.
“We didn't have to update any software. We had several parameters that can be selected with the multifunction and the controls that provide it, so it was already installed in the car.”
“Obviously, we had more and less aggressive settings in our car to ensure that we were always compliant with the rules and that our safety margin was large enough.”
And to show how many dials, rotors and buttons there are on the steering wheel of a 963, here's Cameron explaining the features, which even Formula 1 drivers say are more complex than they're used to:
Watch: Steering Wheel Explained: Porsche 963
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