Spectacular 1-2 proves Porsche’s IMSA credentials

It’s easy to see why Porsche Penske Motorsport dominated in IMSA this year, with Dane Cameron and Felipe Nasr leading home Mathieu Jaminet and Nick Tandy in the final championship standings.

While the stats above indicate things were straightforward, in actual fact, perhaps the most impressive aspect of this season for the team was not those highlighted stats above. But the number of times it had to risk everything over laps, hours, miles, blood, sweat and tears to rebound from the sheer amount of adversity it faced this year.

Car stats

The 2024 IMSA season for Porsche is a story of resilience, often against-all-odds comeback performances that kept an incredible run going and led the 963 to win everything from a 24-hour race to a 1h40m race and everything in between.

21-year Daytona drought ended sets the tone

Of course, winning the first race of the year is important in any championship, as it puts your opponents on the back foot. But this win was more than that.

The ultimate test of any sports prototype is a 24-hour race, and the 2024 24 Hours of Daytona was the first win of that kind for the 963. It came one year after the car was introduced for the 2023 season, after being developed by Porsche in Weissach and in North America with Team Penske.

But more than that, after a tough start to the previous year, the win was the kind of event that brings a team together, and kicks off intangible momentum and belief from everybody in the team that this can be your year. Especially as Daytona takes place just three months after the previous season ended.

“There's immediate validation of all the hard work that everybody put in during the off-season,” says Jonathan Diuguid, Managing Director of Porsche Penske Motorsport.

“Especially when everyone here has struggled through what we struggled through last year. We didn't lose a lot of people, the team that we built here, people have the right mentality and everything.

“To be able to have those successes with the people that struggled through 2023 and 2022 made it that much sweeter.”

The way the race was won also helped. A late in the race pass - which came after more than 30-minutes of battling for the lead - was the kind of lighting rod which sparks a team and a season into action.

It also meant the team could score the rare feat of having an Indianapolis 500 winner and 24 Hours of Daytona champion in Josef Newgarden form part of the line-up in a one-off for the race, with Matt Campbell also stepping in for Endurance rounds this year in a key role.

IMSA runs a prestigious championship for the Endurance races called the Michelin Endurance Cup, which the #7 also went on to win with the teams’ honours and Porsche won the manufacturers’ battle.

How do they keep doing that?

At Sebring, the #7 car had a long stop early on for a sensor issue. At Laguna Seca and Road America, it had to change rear-end bodywork and do a double pitstop and at Detroit, it had a puncture.

What do all of these races all have in common? These incidents all forced the car to the back, but it didn’t finish lower than fourth in any of them and was on the podium in three out of the four.

Race results

It’s been a similar story on the #6 car, which had drive-through penalties for contact in two races but finished on the podium in both, with Tandy and Jaminet also benefiting from excellent strategy calls and quick pit work from the Porsche Penske Motorsport team.

“At Watkins Glen, we changed all four tyres, the rear end and still beat people out of the pitlane,” adds Diuguid.

“I think that's what the men and women on pitlane live for.

“The strategy decisions have been really strong and the recovery, both on pitlane and from the timing stand have been really good. The driving crews have done a great job, and they haven't put us in bad positions.

“Those recoveries have been really important.”

Part of the success this year has been both an increase in reliability but also, and this is linked, the knowledge of the car directly improving and shaping how the team races.

Now in its second year, many of the issues the team comes across with the 963 have been faced before, which means processes have been put in place to fix them already or the team knows exactly what to do. Last year these problems were new and required time to fix.

With a plan in place for problems arising, constantly improving work in the pits on rapid bodywork changes and driver swaps, and knowledge of strategies that did and didn’t work the year before, all of these shaped Porsche Penske Motorsport into a monster of race day execution.

Of course, all of the team’s rivals in the IMSA pitlane suffered as many issues through the year, but didn’t respond as well as Porsche did, as frequently as it could.

The icing on the cake

Looking back on the year, in terms of individual races the 24 Hours of Daytona has to be considered the biggest win. But Laguna Seca will be a race that lives long in the memory of Porsche and Team Penske for many years.

For Porsche it marked 600 IMSA wins, and for Team Penske it notched a 100th sportscar victory.

It was Jaminet and Tandy that won the race, and Jaminet remembers the race fondly and it being a pleasant surprise to find out after the fact what it had achieved.

“It's always cool to be part of the history,” says Jaminet, reflecting on the milestone at the end of the season.

“We have some good memories that you share with all these people, because in the end, it’s a team sport where a lot of people are involved to make this happen. When you have nice victories like this, then the after party is always better.”

It was a crucial and spectacular race for Penske where both Jaminet and Tandy starred. They had to do a really long second stint as part of an unlikely challenge and made the overtake for victory with just 12 minutes on the clock.

It also kickstarted a run of six straight podiums on the road after failing to score one in the first three races of the year.

The championship sealed at the end of the year for the #7 also took Team Penske to the milestone of 45 championships in its history.

“It feels amazing,” adds Nasr on the Laguna Seca achievement.

“Getting those milestones for the team, representing two brands that are iconic within the motorsport community, and just adding another one to the CV, it's just special. I'm sure there is more to come, and that's what I feel excited about with this project.”

The #6 has your back

The #6 Porsche was a title contender all year, and was much closer to the top prize than the scoreboard suggests after a technical infringement removed a podium finish at the Indianapolis race.

But while one perspective might be that it ran the #7 close all year in a tight battle, another would be that it provided key support for the #7 by taking points away from its rivals.

In five of the nine races this year, the #6 car outscored the #7’s closest non-Porsche rival, demonstrating how important its role was.

“They've done a phenomenal job, to put everything on the line, and it's great to have the #6 car being competitive, it helps us too, because at the end of the day, we're sharing the same information,” says Nasr, with both he and Cameron praising the #6 following the championship win.

“It's been a team effort all the way.”

It’s tough that one of the Porsche Penske Motorsport cars had to finish second, but with two wins, there’s still been a lot of positives, especially after a trio of tricky early events.

“We won two races again, we are the only one with the #7 that won two,” says Jaminet, reflecting on the year.

“Since the GTP era also arrived last year, we've been the most successful crew with Nick with four wins. For this we have to be proud, because it wasn't easy and after two or three rounds, we were really far behind, really down on the others.

“So nobody, I think, would have bet on us to actually come back and be second and could be actually champion. So that's actually motivating, and it’s actually cool to look back at the season that way.”

Rexy runs riot

The AO Racing team stepped up to the GTD Pro class for the first time this season as the only Porsche entry in that championship, and proved to be one of IMSA’s most popular winners in 2024.

The team’s T-Rex-liveried 911 GT3 R (992) Is a huge hit with fans, with endless t-shirts, hats and soft toy Rexy dinosaurs on display through the paddock and a mascot who always inspires children to get up close to the team.

“One time I was coming to the US, I was at passport control, and I told the officer that I'm driving Rexy, and he knew Rexy, he went completely crazy, it's incredible,” laughs Laurin Heinrich, the Porsche supported driver who took the GTD Pro drivers’ championship solo this year, while AO won the teams’ title and Porsche claimed the manufacturers’.

On track it was as ferocious as you’d expect from a dinosaur team, scoring three wins and two further podiums. In the last race, the team lost five laps changing a steering wheel connector cable, but luckily it was still able to claim the championship.

“To drive that car, it's incredible really,” adds Heinrich.

“My phone is full of Rexy, and I open Instagram, and I only see Rexy. I think my whole life is around Rexy.”

Heinrich has been an excellent driver to watch in IMSA this year and has repaid the faith shown in him by Porsche.

What comes next?

Immediate attention now switches to the World Endurance Championship, where another of the Porsche Penske Motorsport 963s leads the championship there with one round remaining - the 8 Hours of Bahrain on November 2.

But you already get the feeling that, especially as there’s a test at Daytona before this year is out and there are only three months until the first race of 2025, the team is already plotting how to do better than what many have described as almost the perfect year in IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar racing.