The No. 6 Porsche Penske Motorsport 963 claimed a historic victory for the team and the LMDh formula in FIA WEC competition under the floodlights Saturday in the Qatar 1812km race, after late drama resulted in a shock podium sweep for the German brand.
Laurens Vanthoor, Andre Lotterer and Kevin Estre put in a commanding performance, surviving a late scare in the closing stages when contact with one of the LMGT3 Lexus RC F GT3s knocked off the car’s left-side number panel, to lead home the all-Porsche podium.
The result marks Penske’s first win as a team in the WEC, the first win for the 963 in the championship and the first win for an LMDh-spec car in Hypercar competition. The victory also adds to the 963’s perfect start to 2024, which began with a victory in the IMSA-opening Rolex 24 At Daytona in January.
It was also the first time a manufacturer swept an overall podium un the WEC since 2013 at Spa.
While not an all-time classic, the 2024 season opener at the Lusail International Circuit provided a milestone result for the Hypercar formula, which saw the status quo turned on its head. After the 2023 season saw Toyota and Ferrari almost exclusively set the pace at each round, Saturday’s race became a battle between the Porsche Penske 963 and Peugeot’s No. 93 9X8 in the final send-off for the first iteration of the French OEM’s wingless challenger.
The No. 50 Ferrari led the opening laps after a rocket start for Miguel Molina before Nico Muller drove the No. 93 to the lead by the end of the first hour. The No. 6 then took control of the race in the second hour, when Muller ran wide at Turn 1, letting Vanthoor through.
From then on, when the race settled down, it essentially became a chase between the No. 6 and No. 93, with the gap expanding and contracting as the conditions changed and the tyre strategies played out. At one point early in the second half of the race, the margin shrunk to under 10s, but the Porsche was able to keep the 9X8 at arm’s length and pull away when the sun went down.
In the end, the No. 6 crossed the line 34s clear of the competition after a late stop to place a new number sticker on the car.
“It was a bit crazy, to be honest,” race winner Kevin Estre said. “I had a massive hit with the Lexus, we had a lot of vibration after that and no grip. It made it spicy to the end. But the whole team did an amazing job, no issues. I am really happy with where we are today compared to where we started last year.”
After a loss of power in the dying seconds of the race for Jean-Eric Vergne, the Peugeot failed to take second, making it an all-Porsche podium. It was a crushing blow that ruined what looked to be the 9X8 and Peugeot TotalEnergies’ most convincing showing.
Finishing second after 335 laps of the 5.4km circuit was eventually the No. 12 Hertz Team JOTA Porsche of Norman Nato, Will Stevens and Callum Illot after what was easily the British team’s strongest performance since graduating to the top class.
Ilott finished just 1s ahead of Matt Campbell in the pole-sitting No. 5 Penske Porsche, which struggled with vibration issues early but nabbed third to make it a double podium for Penske.
The late heartbreak for the No. 93 Peugeot, which limped home down in seventh, promoted Cadillac Racing’s V-Series.R to fourth.
Cadillac believed it was in with a chance pre-race, confident the V-Series.R’s long run pace would keep it in the fight. But its plans unravelled at Turn 1 on lap one when Alex Lynn tagged the No. 94 Peugeot, damaging its front-left corner. While it wasn’t entirely clear from the TV footage, Lynn’s teammate Sebastien Bourdais said the car snapped on Lynn because he was hit from the rear by the No. 38 HERTZ Team JOTA Porsche.
The contact forced the team to change the car’s front and rear at its first stop, dropping it down the order. A strong run from Lynn, Bourdais and Earl Bamber saw the car eventually finish fourth.
“To start the season here with a fourth place is sort of where we kicked off last season,” Bamber said. “I think it gives us great momentum. The team did an amazing job and on the strategy, they did a solid job to pull us all the way back up. If you would have said at the beginning of the day that we would get a fourth place, I think we would have taken that comfortably. It’s something that we can build on going to Imola and Spa and the rest of the season.”
On pace, Ferrari may have been a contender for the victory if the race was run again, too. However, all three 499Ps were delayed and were forced into recovery drives to salvage as many points as possible.
The No. 50 led the race in the opening hour but was handed a drive-through for crossing the white line at pit-in early on, failed to find the pace to climb back up the order and crossed the line eighth. On the other side of the garage, the No. 51 then needed a rear clip change after James Calado tagged an LMGT3 car, which sent the rear bodywork flying into the air after becoming dislodged. It finished 14th.
AF Corse’s privately-funded No. 83 499P enjoyed the most impressive outing of the three, but after threatening to stay in the running for a podium in the opening hours, contact for Robert Shwartzman meant it, too, needed a new rear end at a pit stop. This cost valuable time, but it did cross the line as the highest-placed Italian prototype in fifth.
Perhaps the greatest surprise was just how anonymous Toyota’s GR010 HYBRIDs were once the race got underway. After years of dominance from the Japanese make, it was a strange sight to see both its cars struggle to stay on the lead lap in the opening hours of the race.
The No. 7 started on the front row but was swallowed up by the pack in the opening sequence and ended up a lap down before the halfway mark. The second half of the race saw the car in the mix at times, but nobody at Toyota Gazoo Racing will be satisfied with sixth.
The 2023 title-winning No. 8 sister car struggled too, even more than the No. 7. It finished way down in 10th, despite suffering no notable issues.
All week long Toyota played down its chances. The team believed that the weight increase and power decrease it was handed for the race — plus general improvements in form and execution from its competition — would make it a challenge to score points.
Following a quiet run in the test and practice, Nyck de Vries’ heroics in Qualifying provided a brief flash of hope. In the end, once the race got underway, it became clear that this was not going to be a memorable weekend. Instead, this circuit, which is new to the championship, and the tweaked balance of performance values for the race, appeared to favor the characteristics of the 963, V-Series.R and 9X8.
As for the new cars, as expected this race had the look of an extended test session for BMW, Alpine, Lamborghini and Isotta Fraschini. The reliability was impressive, though the No. 15 BMW ended up in the garage briefly in the ninth hour and the Tipo6-C was forced into retirement with front suspension woes after 157 laps.
[lawrence-auto-related count=3 category=1416]
The No. 36 Alpine A424 was the only one of them to finish in the points in ninth, but it was overall an encouraging debut for the new LMDh prototypes which will almost certainly improve rapidly as the season goes on.
The only real concern at this point is just how far Isotta and Lamborghini were off the pace. The Isotta was multiple laps down when it retired in the second half of the race, having been dealt a 200s stop-go for a technical infringement, and the SC63 crossed the line five laps behind the winning car.
It did, however, finish ahead of the No. 15 BMW that hit trouble late on, the No. 94 Peugeot which spent 30 minutes in the garage with battery issues and the No. 38 JOTA Porsche which retired in its pit box after Oliver Rasmussen couldn’t get the car fired in the final hour.
The LMGT3 race at Qatar wasn’t quite the door-banging thriller that many of the teams expected before the lights went out, but it generated plenty of talking points and added to Porsche’s perfect weekend.
The class was won by the No. 92 Manthey Pure Rxcing Porsche 911 LMGT3 R 992 after an engrossing battle with the Heart of Racing Aston Martin. Alex Malykhin, Joel Sturm and Klaus Bachler put together a masterful, fault-free performance in the Lithuanian team’s FIA WEC debut.
The performance continued the young team’s title-winning form from the Asian Le Mans Series over the winter and handed it an early championship lead.
Behind it was a memorable 1-2 finish for Aston Martin’s new-for-2024 Vantage LMGT3, as D’Station’s example took third behind the American-flagged entry from Heart of Racing.