Porsche Penske Motorsport worked hard during the two days of testing at Daytona, where all the protagonists of the IMSA SportsCar Championship gathered together for the first time.
The tests in Florida served first of all to collect data and define the Balance of Performance of the 24h which will open the 2024 season of the American series at the end of January, but also to refine every detail for the manufacturers and teams involved.
The official 963 LMDhs lapped extensively at the International Raceway and CEO Jonathan Diuguid explained that the primary objective was not to seek the record lap, but to get the cars right from a reliability point of view.
“We didn’t focus on times, but more on race pace and listening to our riders. This year our Achilles’ heel was long-distance performance, both due to accidents and technical problems: we are therefore trying to improve them, analyzing reliability and tire degradation, without focusing on peak performance,” Diuguid explained to Motorsport.com.
“Those are our goals for the week and for 2024, which has already started. We’ve been focused on reliability upgrades, we haven’t made any performance upgrades or anything like that.”
Photo by: Richard Dole / Motorsport Images
#6: Porsche Penske Motorsports, Porsche 963, GTP: Nick Tandy, Mathieu Jaminet, Kevin Estre, Laurens Vanthoor
At Daytona, those who worked hardest were the guys in the 963 #7: Dane Cameron, Felipe Nasr, Matt Campbell and Josef Newgarden carried out a series of long runs, putting several laps together, but so did their colleagues in the #6 – Mathieu Jaminet, Nick Tandy, Laurens Vanthoor and Kevin Estre – had a lot to do.
This allowed the Team Penske and Porsche Motorsport technicians to collect data and make up for time lost during the last few weeks, given that a scheduled test in Florida was canceled due to work in progress on the track.
“We brought our two cars here totally concentrating on preparing for the 24 Hours of Daytona and just to do a lot of laps. I think the #7 did more than all the others already on the first day, but the #6 is no different either , albeit with work focused on race performance”.
“We considered 17 hours of track time in two days, which at Daytona is invaluable, so we are trying to exploit them as much as possible. The goal was to accumulate km.”
“We had a November test planned here, but it was canceled because work was still ongoing on the asphalt on the back straight. We did km in the Sebring test in early November and will continue to do so at COTA as well. We are looking to achieve an endurance mileage goal in three events.”
![#7: Porsche Penske Motorsports, Porsche 963, GTP: Dane Cameron, Felipe Nasr, Matt Campbell, Josef Newgarden](https://cdn-9.motorsport.com/images/mgl/YpNpxaX0/s1000/7-porsche-penske-motorsports-p.jpg)
Photo by: Richard Dole / Motorsport Images
#7: Porsche Penske Motorsports, Porsche 963, GTP: Dane Cameron, Felipe Nasr, Matt Campbell, Josef Newgarden
In fact, next week Porsche will go to Austin to continue the development of the 963, a track that it will revisit next year for the Lone Star Le Mans of the FIA WEC and on which it will schedule another test session.
In the meantime Diuguid also commented on the debut of the Lamborghini SC63, which immediately proved fast in these first tests at Daytona.
“Lamborghini has done a good job and they have good pace. Their rpm is low, which is indicative of where we were at the same time last year, but they have the right pace and the team seems good, the drivers are doing a good job. We welcome them to the grid, I know they won’t be present at Daytona, but we will see them at Sebring.”
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