Rd Imsa 12 22 Test 0164 2023 01 03

New Year, New Cars: Porsche 963

The First in a Series Highlighting the New Cars That Will Make a Major Impact on IMSA in 2023. Take a Closer Look at Porsche’s GTP Entry.

 

By Stef Schrader

 

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – Everyone knew Porsche couldn’t stay away from top-class endurance racing for long. The iconic German marque is back in 2023 with the Porsche 963, here to take on not just the Rolex 24 At Daytona, but the full IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship season and Le Mans.

 

The Porsche 963 is a 670-horsepower LMDh-platform racer bound for the new Grand Touring Prototype (GTP) class in the WeatherTech Championship. It’s powered by a twin-turbo, 4.6-liter V-8 internal combustion engine mated to the LMDh’s single-source high-performance hybrid powertrain that utilizes components from Williams Advanced Engineering, Bosch and Xtrac.

 

If you’ve ever wanted to see the Porsche 918 Spyder hybrid go racing, the 963 may just help scratch that itch. The 963’s V-8 is based on the one out of the 918 Spyder, so it was already designed to work with a hybrid system.

 

According to Porsche Director of Factory Racing LMDh Urs Kuratle, this engine was chosen for its suitability with the LMDh rules and the ease of packaging it within the LMDh car. This adapted road car V-8 should also be more economical for teams to run than the bespoke four-cylinder Porsche used in its last top-class Le Mans prototype, the Porsche 919 Hybrid.

 

The Porsche 963’s hybrid system, which is standard on all LMDh cars, utilizes a motor generator unit (MGU) mounted on the rear axle to harvest kinetic energy under braking, and then stores that energy using a lithium-ion battery to aid in propulsion later. A pneumatically actuated seven-speed racing transmission sends the 963’s power to its wheels. All of this sits in a car that weighs just roughly 2,270 pounds without its fuel and driver.

 

Like all LMDh cars, the Porsche 963 is based on a modified Le Mans Prototype 2 (LMP2) chassis from one of four approved constructors. Specifically, the 963 is based on a Multimatic LMP2, with design tweaks that call back to Porsche’s current road car lineup as well as its rich endurance racing history.

 

The continuous lighting strip across the 963’s rear, for example, echoes the lighting design of the current 992-generation Porsche 911. The white, red and black livery worn by the works 963s was meant to echo common colors and designs from the 956 and 962 racing prototypes of the 1980s.

 

Under the pretty design is what matters more, which is where the 963 features a double-wishbone pushrod suspension design at both front and rear as well as two independent brake circuits for its front and rear brake-by-wire systems.

 

Porsche Penske Motorsport is the flagship works effort running the Nos. 6 and 7 Porsche 963s, with both the team and the car making their debut at this month’s Rolex 24. Porsche and Penske previously teamed up to run Porsche’s last factory American prototype team in the mid-2000s with the RS Spyder, with Nos. 6 and 7 being callbacks to numbers used by Penske throughout its history. Penske’s first class-winning car at the Rolex 24 was No. 6, and Penske won the LMP2 class a whopping 16 times with its No. 7 RS Spyder.

 

JDC-Miller MotorSports will add a privateer Porsche 963 to the WeatherTech Championship field later this season, with an additional customer expected to bring Porsche’s GTP car count to four at some point in the 2023 season. Porsche was the first LMDh manufacturer to commit to offering customer LMDh cars, but those customer deliveries have been delayed by supply chain issues.

 

Porsche was also one of the first manufacturers to commit to its LMDh program. The team contributed heavily to the development of the hybrid powertrain to give endurance series around the world a highly competitive top-level spec that can compete at legendary races like the Rolex 24 and the 24 Hours of Le Mans.