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Payne: Penske, Cadillac vie for title this weekend in new era of hybrid sportscar racing
Posted by Talbot Payne on October 12, 2023
Two of Metro Detroit’s highest-profile business brands will be vying this weekend to bring home America’s most prestigious sportscar trophy.
Bloomfield Hills-based Team Penske (aligned with its manufacturing partner and European racing legend, Porsche AG) and General Motors Co.’s Cadillac division go into the final race of the IMSA Weathertech Sportscar Championship at Road Atlanta race track neck-and-neck to win the top-drawer GTP prototype class.
The championship has more significance than just a trophy for both Motor City players.
For Penske, the IMSA quest is part of a journey to win its founder, Roger “The Captain” Penske, one of the few titles that has eluded him in his illustrious career: the 24 Hours of Le Mans. In an up-and-down season, the team fell short of its Le Mans goal last summer, but a season-ending championship at the prestigious, 26th annual Petit Le Mans in Atlanta would be a feather in The Captain’s cap and a strong signal from the team heading into the 2024 campaign.
“The program has taken some punches this year,” said Porsche Penske Managing Director Jonathan Duiguid, reflecting on a year when the team struggled out of the box with mechanical issues at the Daytona 24 Hours and a race-altering crash at the Sebring 12-Hour in Florida. “After Daytona and Sebring, you would have thought we would be a long shot. Now here we are fighting for a championship like we all wanted.”
For Cadillac (as well as Porsche), the win would be hugely significant in the inaugural year of the hybrid sportscar era. Global manufacturers including Cadillac, Porsche, BMW AG and Ferrari S.p.A. are all investing heavily in sportscar racing as part of the industry’s shift to government-mandated electrification. A motorsports championship is bragging rights for technological prowess in the new age.
Porsche Penske’s shot at the title lies with the driving team of Nicky Tandy and Mathieu Jaminet in the #6 Porsche 963, who lies just five points behind the points leader — the Cadillac Action Express Racing duo of Pipo Derani and Alexander Sims. The two teams make up a four-team dogfight for the championship that includes Acura Wayne Taylor Racing’s Ricky Taylor/Filipe Albuquerque (three points behind the leader) and the long-shot BMW M Team Rahal Lanigan Letterman team of Connor De Phillippi and Nick Yelloly (38 points behind).
“To have the four manufacturers fighting for the championship in the first year of GTP is fantastic,” said Derani, who won the IMSA championship in 2021. “There has been a massive amount of effort from all the manufacturers in such a short period of time to build and develop the GTP cars that are very complex and so much learning in just a few months before we went racing. You want to make sure you were the first one to bring a championship home.”
Even if Porsche Penske takes the checked flag at 9.40 p.m. Friday after a grueling 10-hour race, the team is always looking toward the big prize: the 24 Hours of Le Mans next June in France.
Though one of its three entries led at Le Mans this year in the Porsche 963’s inaugural run at the prestigious race, technical issues and accidents befell the team and no car finished better than ninth.
Team Penske knows what a Le Mans victory means to their 86-year-young Captain and to Porsche (going for a record 20th win), and Josef Newgarden wants to be part of the effort. Determined to gain endurance-racing experience ahead of Porsche Penske’s assault on the French race next year, the 2023 Indy 500 winner and two-time IndyCar champ will be in the driver’s seat this weekend of the #7 Porsche 963 — sharing driving duties with Matt Campbell and Felipe Nasr.
“There is no doubt he brings a higher profile to the sport. But the major reason he is with the team this weekend is because he is a qualified driver,” deadpanned Duiguid ahead of the race. “There is a long list of people who want to drive these cars.”
The field of electrified racers will only grow in the next two years as Porsche, Cadillac, BMW, Ferrari, Toyota and Acura are joined by Aston Martin, Lamborghini, Peugot, and Alpine in the hunt for Le Mans immortality.
Motorsports is moving to hybrid racing as the most severe government regulations since the 1970s roil the auto industry. Oil crisis politics in the 1970s led to unprecedented government interference in motorsports, leading to the cancellation of the 1973 Daytona 24 Hour and restrictions on the amount of fuel NASCAR used. Determined to avoid disruptions amidst current government calls to ban gas engines, open-wheel Formula One racing added electric motors to its powertrains in 2014, and international sportscar racing followed this year. IndyCar and NASCAR racing are poised to follow in coming years.
To avoid the massive costs that hybrid systems have brought to Formula One, sportscar racing has adopted a spec racing formula whereby teams share hybrid systems to reduce costs. While automakers like Cadillac (5.5-liter V-8) and Porsche (4.6-liter twin-turbo V-8) showcase their own internal combustion engine technology, engines must be married to the same battery-electric components developed by Bosch, XTrac and Williams Engineering.
“That’s the right way to do it for the future financial sustainability of the sport,” said Porsche Motorsport racing programs chief Urs Kuratle.
The hybrid effort has been a work in progress as teams have integrated the new electric technologies with gas engines in a crash program that began just a year before the first race in Daytona in January. The effort has included extensive safety measures put in place to protect corner workers — and drivers — from the high-voltage electric systems on board in case of failure.
“We’ve made a lot of improvements in the hybrid system,” said Porsche’s Kuratle. “There is still a lot of work to do. Failure is an open book — all teams have access to each other’s data. The focus is on reliability.”
The coordinated effort has inspired the most competitive, most automaker-supported sportscar racing in decades. This weekend’s event will have 54 entries across five classes, with the 10-car GTP car field (and its title dogfight) headlining the field.
“I think everyone would have liked more testing,” said Cadillac driver Derani of the ongoing development of the 700-horsepower hybrid rocket ships. “But the more we go the more we understand, the more we come to grips with those software integrations. It’s something to keep an eye on in this race that starts in the day and finishes in the night. Those little tweaks could end up making a difference.”
Henry Payne is auto critic for The Detroit News. Find him at hpayne@detroitnews.com or Twitter @HenryEPayne.