Le Mans | Porsche-Vettel: the wedding could happen in the future

Porsche has not at all ruled out the possibility of including Sebastian Vettel in its roster of drivers for the 24h of Le Mans in the future.

After the tests carried out on the simulator and on the track with the official 963, the German and the Weissach manufacturer will not be together at the race to be held on the Circuit de la Sarthe next June 15-16, but for the 2025 edition the possibilities are not they have set.

Indeed, as Urs Kuratle explained to Motorsport.com, contacts are alive and the 4-time F1 World Champion will have plenty of time to prepare and organize his entry into the world of endurance.

“For a brand like Porsche I think it is obvious to take Sebastian into consideration, and vice versa. I am convinced that he is ready, he said so himself after the test, but when and in what form it will materialize remains to be seen. At the moment it has not been defined as nothing”, specifies the Director of the official Porsche LMDh program.

“I am in contact with several people and he is one of them, but we already knew each other before, even if he is not the person you call every day. The ideal situation simply did not materialize, but there is no culprit; It didn’t happen, that’s all.”

Porsche has in its annals the precedent of the success achieved by Nico Hülkenberg in 2015 teamed with Nick Tandy and Earl Bamber at the wheel of the 919 Hybrid.

At that time the German managed to participate in Le Mans after having been at the 6h of Spa with the third LMP1 managed by the official team of the brand, which allowed him to train and understand the vehicle well.

For Vettel this opportunity did not materialize, as the Porsche Penske Motorsport team had commitments on two fronts between WEC and IMSA, as Kuratle points out.

“The biggest difference at the moment is probably the weight. LMP1 and LMH are both very complex cars, but different in terms of design. And the weight is much higher on the current ones, considering that our races also take place at night and that we have large differences in speed compared to all the Classes that meet on the track”.

“This means that a rookie needs some time to get used to. In 2015 Hülkenberg was racing in F1 and the LMP1s were not too far apart in kg; he also benefited from the fact that at Spa we managed to field three cars to train well, while today there was no such possibility; in the same weekend we found ourselves racing the WEC in Belgium and the IMSA in Laguna Seca”.

“And the same occurred in Imola and Long Beach, so our hands were a little more tied than in 2015. It’s not easy at all and if we consider that the starting grid at Spa was 37 cars, probably not there would have been room anyway; as a result, we never pursued the idea because we simply couldn’t handle it all.”