We caught up with 2024 World Endurance champion Kévin Estre ahead of the new season to discuss his title campaign and find out more about the man beneath the helmet.
It has been a whirlwind 12 months for Kévin Estre. Kicking off the 2024 FIA World Endurance Championship in style with victory in Qatar, he and #6 car team-mates André Lotterer and Laurens Vanthoor experienced a rollercoaster of emotions on their way to becoming champions.
With three second-place finishes, another win in Fuji and a coveted pole position at the iconic 24 Hours of Le Mans to his name - a lap which many branded the best of the year - it was a stellar season for the Frenchman as he achieved one of his biggest dreams: a championship win in the top tier of endurance racing.
Claiming the trophy in Bahrain in November was the culmination of years of work, beginning as a young go-karter in Lyon. Stepping up into single-seaters, the young Estre dreamed of racing in Formula 1, but steep budgets saw him select sportscars instead.
Beginning with Porsche Carrera Cup France, he had instant results, taking a win in his first season before claiming the title in 2011. Next came the Porsche Mobil 1 Supercup, where he was runner-up in 2012, before another Carrera Cup title - this time in Germany - the following year.
After a brief spell as a McLaren works driver, Estre joined the Porsche works line-up in 2016. Since then he has racked up victories in three of the four big 24 hour races, and names his highlights as “winning Le Mans in GT Pro in 2018, winning the Spa 24 Hours in 2019, Nürburgring 24 Hours in 2021.
“Joining Porsche Penske Motorsport in 2023 in the Hypercar class, which was a dream of mine to compete in the highest class in endurance, and then with last year’s achievement of winning two races in the WEC and being world champion in the Hypercar class is definitely the biggest, together with the Le Mans win.”
Becoming world champion last season was far from an easy journey for Estre. Starting the year with a mindset that was “definitely not overconfident” after a challenging 2023, he, Lotterer and Vanthoor had a “very good surprise” when they won the opening round in Qatar.
Heading to Imola, they remained cautious as it was a “very different track which shouldn’t suit our car,” but went on to finish second after executing a strong strategy and good performance.
“[Imola] reflected well our season, that when we were not the quickest, we always finished well and scored good points and got the best out of the car and the performance we had,” Estre said.
“This is due to a great job from the team in terms of pit stop strategy, no reliability issues - I’m not sure how many hours we raced, probably 50, but we had no technical issues on our car which caused us a penalty on the performance or the result.
“We were consistent throughout the year, and that's what won us the championship.”
From there, the trio went on to finish second twice more, at Spa and São Paulo, while Estre also secured a stunning pole position at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Though the trio went on to finish fourth, narrowly missing out on the podium, his pole lap was lauded as one of the best of the year.
Heading into the closing stages of the championship, it was another win at Fuji getting them over the line to clinch the championship at the season finale in Bahrain - a “very proud moment and also great to have shared that with Laurens and André.” The trio fostered a close relationship across the year, and Lotterer’s departure from the team provided even more motivation to succeed.
“We had a lot of fun, inside and outside the car, we understood each other very well,” Estre said. “There was no ego. We were close enough together to have no big compromise on set-up, on tyres and stuff, but we used this difference in the right way.
“If one driver was a bit more gentle on tyres and another was a bit more aggressive, we were able to swap to have the best driver possible in that situation - we did that in Bahrain where one compound worked better for me, another worked better for Andre, and we swapped.
“We always had the winning of car #6 as our motivation, never ourselves first, and we all had the same mindset and that’s why it worked really well.”
The trio also put paid to criticism on social media. One post ahead of the season opener claimed Estre was past his prime, branded Lotterer “80-years-old” and placed Vanthoor as the ‘second best Vanthoor brother’ behind younger sibling Dries, who drives for BMW.
“There’s always these memes and stuff, people are having fun and you should not take everything to the first degree, especially with social media nowadays, because otherwise you would get crazy,” Estre said.
“But definitely we were like okay, some people think that, then let’s prove them wrong. I’m glad we did that. If past prime is getting the pole in Le Mans and second best Vanthoor is winning and 80-year-old Lotterer is world champion, then it’s good enough.”
After a long season, Estre returned home to Austria after the season finale for some much earned rest. Spending around 200 days every year on the road, what does a WEC world champion do to switch off?
“I used to play quite a bit of golf, but now I have two kids and a wife who is working, so I play golf mostly at races when I have time, or between testing or racing,” he said. “At home last year I haven’t played much.
“In the winter, I like skiing, so that’s my biggest hobby then. A little bit of tennis, a bit of golf when I can, and mostly spending time with my family when I can. Last year, we were away for about 200 days, so you don’t have much time home.
“Trying to get the best out of it, enjoying the outside activities near our home in Austria near a big lake. There’s some beach there, some friends have boats, so enjoying the summer there, riding my bike around here.
“I must say I have a very simple life besides racing when I’m at home, just bringing the kids to school or kindergarten, bringing them to football, gymnastics, spending time at home and enjoying a bit of free time with the calm, quiet lifestyle.
“I love good food. I’m French, so it’s big in our culture and our blood. I have the privilege of a wife who cooks very well so yeah, I enjoy buying good food around here and that’s also the advantage of living in the countryside here.
“There’s a chicken farm 15 minutes away to get fresh eggs and chicken, we grow vegetables in the garden, making bread. It’s a simple, easy life here of buying fresh, local products.”
Having recharged his batteries, Estre now looks ahead to the 2025 season, which kicks off on February 28 with the Qatar 1812km. With Lotterer having departed the team at the end of last year, Estre and Vanthoor will instead be joined by Matt Campbell for selected rounds in 2025, including Qatar and the 6 Hours of Spa.
With Aston Martin set to join the Hypercar class this year and with many teams now entering their second campaign, the competition will be stronger than ever. But Estre is confident in the team’s ability and enters the season raring to go.
“Winter was short but I tried to physically stay in a good shape in the winter as that’s the most time we have at home, so I wanted to put good foundations on my physical state,” he said.
“Mentally, I feel good, because we just won and we had a great season, so I didn’t need a lot of work. It was a much easier winter than the year before. We’ve already had quite a lot of meetings with our engineers, our crew is staying very similar to last year, just with Matt replacing Andre, so we have to adapt to him and have him adapt to us and learn from each other to recreate this group, which is a process we started earlier this year.
“Defending the title is going to be tough for sure, we know how hard the competition is, most of the new cars which came last year are going to be strong this year - BMW, Alpine, Aston Martin coming, Cadillac changing teams - I think there’s going to be even more competition than last year.
“But we will also improve and I can’t wait to get started and see what this winter brought and how strong we are going to be as a team.”
With two years of Hypercar experience behind him, what were Estre’s biggest learnings last season?
“The mindset of endurance racing is always to stay calm and you’ll have time to come back most of the time, and we proved that last year many times again,” he said.
“It’s always good to have this as a reminder. There were one or two races - São Paulo for example, where we got a puncture after 30 minutes and were almost one lap down but we bounced back and finished second with good strategy and pace.
“This always reminds you that you have to keep fighting, that’s for sure - that’s my spirit - but you still have to look forward, not thinking about what happened and just trying to find solutions to get the best out of the situation.
“We had this many times last year with tough qualifying, starting far away. I think to work as a group, to have the same mindset, I didn’t learn this last year but it became more important and we showed you can achieve better results than what you expect just by having that and being consistent.
“When you look at the season, with the years as I get older - I’m closer to retirement than the beginning of my career - so yeah, just thinking about the risk you want to take at which time of the race and which time of the year and this is the experience every year you get better managing risks.”
With his fighting spirit stronger than ever, and with a fantastic new driver line-up to challenge for the title defence, Estre is raring to go ahead of this month’s season opener.
Alongside the #6 car, the #5 Porsche 963 will also feature a new line-up. Michael Christensen is joined by new Porsche factory driver Julien Andlauer, with Mathieu Jaminet joining the pair for selected rounds from the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar championship.
Both cars will be determined to retain the crown, and also fight for the WEC manufacturers’ championship. With an eight-round calendar including the blue riband 24 Hours of Le Mans, 2025 is sure to be another thrilling outing for the Porsche Penske Motorsport team.
