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Penske at Le Mans: The Captain’s quest with Porsche for the ultimate sportscar glory
Posted by Talbot Payne on June 24, 2024
Le Mans, France — The 87-year-old Detroit industrialist Roger Penske has made motorsports success the centerpiece of his sprawling, global business empire with 20 Indy 500s, 17 IndyCar championships, 16 Australian Supercar titles, four NASCAR titles, three Daytona 500 races and two Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona.
But one item on his bucket list has eluded him: a win at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the globe’s most prestigious sportscar race. Penske drove in the 24 Hours of Le Mans just once, for Italian sportscar maker Ferrari in 1963, and fielded entries in 1971, again with Ferrari, and last year with the winningest Le Mans brand of all time, German sportscar maker Porsche, which has won the 24 Hours 19 times.
Hungry for victory in 2024, he has reunited with Porsche in a historic bid to win the Big One. The Porsche Penske all-star team had previously scored championships in 1972 and 2006-08 in two North American sportscar series. The team this June has entered three Porsche 963 Hypercars, driven by the world’s top sportscar drivers, for an all-out assault on the grueling, twice-around the clock contest Saturday and Sunday.
On Thursday, the #6 Porsche Penske driven by Kevin Estre delivered Penske his first Le Mans pole position, nipping Cadillac by 0.1 seconds in the final moments of Hyperpole qualifying.
“Over the course of my career, our teams have been fortunate to produce many significant victories, including wins at some of the biggest race events in the world,” said the soft-spoken Captain, as his troops affectionally call him, in an interview ahead of the French epic. “The 24 Hours of Le Mans has such great tradition and prestige. It’s an event where our teams have never experienced victory, so it would be a special accomplishment, both for our team as well as for our partners at Porsche.”
The respect is mutual.“When it came to choosing a partner for our new program with the Porsche 963, Team Penske was the logical choice,” said Vice President of Porsche Motorsport Thomas Laudenbach in an interview, “especially because we were looking for a global WEC and IMSA partner.”A rare alignment of the two premier international motorsports sanctioning bodies, Europe’s World Entrance Championship and North America’s International Motor Sports Association, opened an opportunity for the racing community to compete across the globe under common rules. Porsche Penske jumped at the chance, uniting the motorsports legends for the first time since 2008 when they successfully teamed in an RS Spyder in North America’s smaller LMP2 class.
“The common past in U.S. motorsports was highly successful. I personally was even a part of it,” Laudenbach said. “In the successful years with the RS Spyder, I was responsible for the engines. Back then, I was able to see very clearly the demands, ambitions and high standards of Team Penske. Without any doubt, Roger Penske’s team is the right partner.”
The Hypercar category, the world’s fastest sportscar class with speeds in excess of 200 mph at Le Mans, raises the bar. From the front of the grid, the pole-sitting Porsche Penske 963 will have to hold off an Olympian field of 25 winged, hybrid-powered, prototype Hypercars to take the top step of the podium.
“In 24-hour races, I’ve learned that, if you’re not there at the end of it, it doesn’t matter where you start,” deadpanned Penske at a press conference Friday. “Our goal is to be (at the winner’s press conference) Sunday night.”
Rivals include Alpine A424, BMW M, Cadillac V-Series.R, Lamborghini SC63, Peugeot 9X8, Toyota GR010 and last year’s winner, Ferrari 499P. In Thursday’s qualifying session, a mere 1 second separated the top 6 Hypercars across an 8.5-mile lap.
“With such a rich history, Le Mans is the world’s most historic endurance race,” Penske said. “And the competition is part of what makes this event so special with increased Hypercar entries year over year.”
Hypercars will compete in a ferocious mixed-class race that includes less powerful, so-called LMP2 prototypes, and production-based GT3 beasts, including household names like Aston Martin Vantage, Chevy Corvette Z06, Ferrari 269, Ford Mustang, Lamborghini Huracan and McLaren 720.
“If there is one race you want to win, this is the one,” said sportscar ace Estre, who put Penske in pole position at Le Mans for the first time.
In addition to fighting each other, Hypercar drivers must negotiate traffic through the other classes having their own podium battles. It makes for exciting — and harrowing — racing as Hypercars duck and cut between cars. The huge, 62-car, three-class entry comes despite the most draconian government auto regulations since the 1970s — regulations that, combined with the OPEC oil crisis, threatened racing’s existence at the time. But 50 years later, manufacturers have adroitly negotiated political trends — fielding hybrid powertrains powered by synthetic fuels — to perpetuate the sport.
After a teething year in 2023 that included a disappointing ninth-place Le Mans debut marked by on-track incidents and mechanical hiccups, Porsche Penske has been on a roll this year. The team opened the season by winning IMSA’s Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona (The Captain’s first Rolex since 1969), defeating Cadillac in a fierce, down-to-the-wire battle. On the WEC front, Porsche Penske is leading the WEC manufacturer’s championship after a win in Qatar, and will take the green flag on pole for Saturday’s 4 p.m. (Le Mans time) race start.
Belgian driver Laurens Vanthoor, co-driving the #6 963 this weekend with four-time Le Mans winner Andre Lotterer and Estre, told Sportscar365.com that the team is “night and day” different from a year ago. Porsche Penske managing director John Diuguid agreed.
“It’s definitely a different atmosphere,” he told the racing publication. “You can probably see it on the faces of everybody around here. We have all the spares prepared, and a lot of our engineering tools and processes are in place.”
It’s a familiar march for Penske, who has built winning relationships over the last seven decades with manufacturers as varied as Chevrolet, Ford and Acura. “We are proud to work with Porsche as we have built this program the right way from the ground up,” he said.
Yet, for all its success with Team Penske, Porsche has not put its eggs in one basket. To encourage inter-team competition, race shops Hertz Team Jota and Proton Competition have also prepared 963 Hypercars for Le Mans.
“Yeah, they could beat us,” Vanthoor said.
For The Captain, the Le Mans opportunity is the culmination of a sportscar career working with Porsche dating back six decades.
“To experience victory at this event with Porsche would be something truly special,” he said.
And what would a Le Mans win would mean to his Bloomfield Hills-based organization? “With our history of winning at some of the most prestigious races in the world, Le Mans would be quite an accomplishment to add to our racing heritage.”
Henry Payne is auto critic for The Detroit News. Find him at hpayne@detroitnews.com or @HenryEPayne.
How to watch
The 24 Hours of Le Mans begins at 4 p.m. Saturday Le Mans time (10 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time).
In the United States, the race will be broadcast by the Max streaming service and the Discovery+ pay TV channel.
In Canada, the race will be shown on the CTV digital platform.
Source: FIA World Endurance Championship