The story behind Porsche Penske's driver reshuffle

The big story for Porsche Penske Motorsport during the off-season was the consolidation of its driver line-ups across the IMSA WeatherTech and FIA World Endurance Championships.

Porsche Penske was the only GTP team that planned to run three drivers per car from the beginning of preparations for the Rolex 24 At Daytona, after running four drivers per car in preparation for a since-delayed, four-driver mandate for GTP teams at Daytona.

It involved a lot of difficult decisions, including letting go of Porsche works drivers like Andre Lotterer, Frederic Makowiecki, and Dane Cameron. But Porsche Motorsport Director of Factory Racing Urs Kuratle felt confident heading into race week that these changes will benefit the Porsche program at Daytona and beyond.

“There were long internal discussions about the driver line-up, how to approach it,” he says. “And we are in the nice position on both programs, in the WEC program and the IMSA program – we have a lot of very skilled drivers in the program.

“We felt it was the best idea to have a three-driver endurance line-up, like we have it here. We’ll probably have the same on the WEC side, and making use of all the drivers from all sides of the program – that was our major goal.

“We probably have the best driver line-up in the paddock here, and we’ll take the best result of it.”

As part of the change, of course, Mathieu Jaminet and Nick Tandy have been split up as the primary drivers of the No.6 Porsche Penske Motorsport 963 after two seasons together. Jaminet reunited with Matt Campbell in the No.6, while Tandy joins reigning IMSA GTP Champion Felipe Nasr in the No.7.

Campbell and Jaminet will also take part in WEC rounds that do not conflict with the IMSA calendar.

“There were long discussions,” Kuratle says. “There are personality topics, size topics, and driver style topics. There’s all sorts of things which are coming together in those discussions.

“It’s never an easy decision; how to pair the whole team’s drivers. Driver feedback is also an important topic to decide whether to take all those decisions. And we’ll see how it works. We’re really confident it’ll work out really well.”

It will mean that the three drivers of both Penske cars – including reigning FIA World Hypercar endurance champions Kevin Estre and Laurens Vanthoor – will also be expected to shoulder a more even load of driving duties during the 24-hour race.

“You’re a little bit more locked into the rotation and planning that you have prior to the race, and you’re probably less flexible and less dynamic,” says Porsche Penske Motorsport Managing Director Jonathan Diuguid. “Maybe you’re making a decision on one or two guys around the last six hours of the race, but pretty much everything else is planned out before you start.

“In our case, I think our driver rotation will be pretty fixed before we start the race unless something massively changes, and that’s probably the biggest change.

“It’s kind of an easier approach from us in that regard, but it’s also easy in a sense that all three guys in each car are performing on quite a similar level. So there’s really no negatives to that approach.”

There will still be some element of reacting to how the race develops going into the final hours though, just as the team did last year when Nasr took control for most of the final quarter of the 2024 event.

“I think the good thing about this year’s race is the conditions look like they’re going to be pretty consistent for the duration of the race,” Diuguid says. “So we can use the first 18 hours to say, ‘Hey, this guy is performing at a high level, or feeling more comfortable with where the track and the balance is.’

“At the end of the day, like you saw last year with Felipe and the No.31 (Cadillac Whelen) car, it’s going to come down to a dogfight at the end of the race. So we’re going to make whatever decisions we need to make sure we have the best opportunity to win the race.”

Diuguid confirmed that Porsche has not assigned an official reserve driver for Daytona in the event of an injury or illness, but hinted that Julien Andlauer, who joined the Porsche Penske WEC team this year and is entered in the Proton Competition No.5 Porsche, could be made available to transfer to one of the two cars.