Porsche dominated the Qatar 1812Km last Saturday on the way to a maiden win in the World Endurance Championship for the 963 and a first series victory for any LMDh prototype. Laurens Vanthoor, Kevin Estre and Andre Lotterer were never headed from late in the second hour of a race that hit its full distance four minutes short of the 10-hour cut-off. But it wasn’t all plain sailing for the drivers of the #6 car. A late unscheduled pitstop after the car sustained body damage set doubts racing in Estre’s mind.
When the Frenchman was instructed to pit with seven laps of the 335 to go, his reaction was “ahh, come on”. A series of clashes with LMGT3 machinery over the final quarter of the race had damaged both the left sidepod and the floor, and he knew that anything but the briefest of repairs was going to rip victory from his and his team-mates’ grasp. But Estre was told not to worry. All the Penske Porsche Motorsport crew had to do was affix a new adhesive race number to replace the one that had gone west with a chunk of the bodywork behind the wheel. The rules state that race numbers “must remain visible in all circumstances”.
Just 47 seconds were lost, pit-in to pit-out, which meant the #6 car emerged with a lead over Jean-Eric Vergne in the chasing Peugeot
