After a tumultuous start to the FIA World Endurance Championship season, Porsche Penske Motorsport managing director Jonathan Diuguid credited the resilience of his team as a factor in keeping morale high in preparation for their win in Sunday’s Lone Star Le Mans at COTA.
“I think in general, the team moves on pretty quickly weekend to weekend, and we treat every other race as a new opportunity,” Diuguid told RACER.com after Sunday’s victory.
“And that’s what we did today as well. Obviously the rain mixed everything up and hung around for a lot longer than it was supposed to, and that put us in a pretty good scenario to be able to win.
Through difficult conditions, the No. 6 Porsche 963 of Kévin Estre, Laurens Vanthoor, and Matt Campbell won the race in dramatic fashion.
Could they have won if the weather was only slightly wet as it was during Saturday qualifying, or even in the extreme heat of Friday’s free practices? “I would like to think so,” Diuguid affirmed. “It’s tough to say; we had a strong performance in Brazil, so I don’t have any reason to think we shouldn’t have been strong here in COTA.”
The win breaks a streak of futility for the WEC side of the factory Porsche team, which had been so lackluster until Le Mans – all while Porsche Penske’s IMSA program could do no wrong, opening their season with four straight wins.
Improbably, Estre and Vanthoor still have a small but not impossible chance to win their second consecutive set of Hypercar World Endurance Drivers’ Championships. They leave Austin trailing by just 36 points with the final two rounds at Fuji and Bahrain still to come, and as many as 65 points available in those last two races.
“We’re going to keep pushing all the way until the end. That’s why there’s two races, especially this longer-distance one [in Bahrain]. Fuji was a good race for us last year, and it’s been consistently strong for the 963 – and the same thing with Bahrain in the year end. So it’s not over until the last race, and we’re going to keep pushing until the end,” Diuguid stated.
This was the first time that Porsche Penske had won in either WEC or IMSA since Diuguid was promoted to President of Penske Racing on July 4, giving him more responsibilities over Penske’s programs in WEC, IMSA, and the NTT IndyCar Series.
“I try not to say I’m the one doing everything,” Diuguid said of the greater leadership roles he’s assumed in recent months. “Obviously, I’ve had some responsibilities added, but there’s a lot of great people in our entire organization both on the IndyCar program and IMSA program, and here today on the WEC program.
