Porsche has taken the wraps off its new LMDh challenger, which will carry the company’s fortunes in endurance racing on both sides of the Atlantic. The 963 marks the return of the German manufacturer to endurance racing for the first time since the end of the 919 Hybrid LMP1 programme in 2017.
Then, Porsche pulled the plug on its project mid-way through its agreement with the FIA World Endurance Championship, but the company has been encouraged back to endurance racing by the new regulation set that allows it to build a hybrid Prototype for significantly less money than before.
The original plan was to return Porsche to its glory days of the 956s and 962s of the 1980s, with cars run in customer hands in endurance racing around the world. To that end, the LMDh platform was chosen as it was accepted in both the US IMSA WeatherTech Sportscar Championship and the FIA World Endurance Championship.
For the latter series, in order to accommodate LMDh cars, there have been some significant regulation changes, although these primarily concern the LMH manufacturers that have produced ground-up racecars, and take care of their own hybrid development. These include tyre sizes, hybrid deployment speeds and cockpit-adjustable anti-roll bars, as the governing bodies seek to give each car a chance to win.
Early starter
The Porsche will use a hybrid system that is standard across all the LMDh programmes, with battery from Williams Advanced Engineering, motor from Bosch and gearbox from Xtrac. So far, it has been the only one to hit the track, conducting much of the hybrid testing ready for introduction into other cars, notably Cadillac, Acura and BMW, in July.
