Insight: How Porsche Penske is Aiming to Stay on Top Despite WEC Exit

Penske Racing President Jonathan Diuguid on team's new single-series approach for LMDh's most successful team, manufacturer...

Porsche Penske Motorsport has arguably been the benchmark team with a LMDh car since the platform’s launch thee years ago. The factory operation, which was the first to put a car in track in early 2022, has racked up 14 wins out of 50 races globally between the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship and FIA World Endurance Championship. By comparison, the next-most successful LMDh manufacturers, Cadillac and Acura, the latter which has only raced in IMSA, each only have half that number, all while going through multiple team changes.

The majority of Porsche Penske’s success has come in the WeatherTech Championship, where it holds a remarkable 41 percent win record, including back-to-back Rolex 24 at Daytona victories and top honors in last year’s Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring as it enters the 2026 season seeking its third consecutive GTP crown.

However, it will do so in a very different approach from years’ past, following Porsche’s decision to exit the Hypercar class in the WEC, effectively cutting the Porsche Penske organization in half and resulting in a heavily revised driver lineup in the WeatherTech Championship that sees three of its four WEC drivers from last year move over on a full-time basis.

While maintaining its European base in Mannheim, Germany to employ a small number of staff and keep its close links to Porsche Motorsport in nearby Weissach, the upcoming IMSA campaign could be Porsche Penske’s toughest yet, with an expected increase in competition, new unknowns in Michelin’s new Pilot Sport Endurance line of tires, as well as a reduction in available test days due to the Porsche 963 now competing in a only single series.

“We’ve strengthened the team to recover from some of the personnel capacity we lost in WEC,” explains Penske Racing President Jonathan Diuguid. “Obviously we were spreading workload across two teams at that point. In general, that’s been reduced, so we’ve had to add some capacity, two to three engineers in Mooresville, to pick up some of the workload that was happening there.

“As far as our manufacturer partner Porsche, the support we’re getting there is the same. Honestly, we have a little bit more capacity just because they’re fully focused on the IMSA program. But in general, I wouldn’t say we’ve given anything up aside from some track testing days and things like that, which we’re going to lose based off the regulations.”