Porsche: no to works GT return
Porsche has ruled out a factory return to the front line of GT racing in the IMSA Sportscar Championship next season.
The German manufacturer’s long-standing programme in the GT Le Mans class, which was axed for this season, will not be revived on the championship’s move to the Gt3-based GT Daytona Pro class in
North America 2022.
“We will not have a factory team,” stated Porsche head of factory motorsport Pascal Zurlinden. “GT3 is about customers. If a customer comes to us and says, ‘We want to run, do you have factory drivers for us, can you do something?’, we would support it as we do with our customers in GT3 worldwide. GT3 is a customer racing class, so what is important is that it stays with the customers and doesn’t become a factory effort. That would send the wrong signal to our customers.”
Porsche is still a participant in GTLM this year with the customer Weathertech Racing 911 RSR run by Proton Competition. It has loaned a series of factory drivers to the team for the 2021 campaign.
Porsche’s GTLM factory campaign with the CORE Autosport squad, which dated back to 2014 and the first season of the merged IMSA series, was axed in June last year in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. The move played a key role in IMSA’S decision to replace the GTE rulebook that underpinned GTLM with the GT3 concept already in place in the GTD pro-am class.
Zurlinden stressed that there were no decisions on Porsche’s factory future in the GT ranks of the World Endurance Championship beyond its present commitment to GTE Pro until the end of 2022, which will be followed by its return to the prototype arena with its new LMDH contender. It is awaiting an announcement of what series promoter the Automobile Club de l’ouest and the FIA have planned for beyond the end of next year.
But should the ACO follow IMSA’S route and adopt GT3 for both its pro and am categories for 2023 or beyond, Zurlinden suggested that there would be no overt works presence. He explained that he agreed with Stephane Ratel, the architect of the GT3 class, that competition between full-factory teams could spell the death of the category.