Mr.Valero

Think this needs to be discussed, this is a safe space so speak what you really think....

I'll start, I'm extremely disappointed with Porsche's performance at the 2023 24 Hours of Lemans, I feel like they made a halfa"#$ effort to be there not even having a true factory team, for a company that lives from Marketing itself through Motorsport success it doesn't make any sense to not go 100% in and let somebody else call the shot's even if they're named Penske, Andretti, Hass, Ganassi... Also if you are going to give the responsibility to someone else at least give them proper technical support and a quality product, Ferrari went in with Corse and developed a Car that took the Hyperpole and won in 1 year.... Good for them!
Porsche Wake up and get your act together! 9th place... not through racing incidents but by technical and quality problems, At least the Jota/Hertz car went down fighting! Yifei Ye was flying and crashed he's only 22 and that's racing and I can live with that...
I love my Porsche cars and I will be at Lemans Classic at the end of the month where I hope to see the 934s 935s and the Mighty 917s do their thing! I'm traveling al the way over there for that too bad I won't find any joy in seeing the beautiful 963s that I'm sure will be in display...

erko1905

I agree, I watched a decent amount of the race, and Hypercar effort was quite disappointing indeed. I mean no offense to Glickenhaus, I love what their doing, but Porsche finishing below them is a bit absurd. It was fun to see the Jota Hertz guys hustling hard though, especially on the restart, agreed on that one as well.

I watched the GTE a bit more this year, which was also quite interesting. Iron Dames, which has been a Ferrari team, is actually faster than the Proton teams in a Porsche as well, and the Corvette, either the BoP was a bit nuts or their Bronze driver is flying but they were on another level.

Cool to see the Ferrari boys have some racing success though, they're quite traumatized by F1 at the moment. ExF1 Giovinazzi and also Hartley in the Toyota showing great pace as well.

Finally, Peugeot car design at night, that was full Batman, kudos to them on that look.

Glenncal1

Even the 911's had a rough time of it this year. Saw one 911 in a pretty bad solo crash.

erko1905

I think Fassbender needs to take a break

Mr.Valero

He raced like a true Hollywood star... among racers! I was really rooting for the Iron Dames in their Pink Porsche, they missed the podium by .000046 (I did the calculation) , I've been watching the "Road to Lemans" videos on youtube and really wanted Fassbender to do well... He's following the dream! I watched his onboard camera every time he was driving but after seeing him spin and barely missing the wall 3 times I couldn't take the stress anymore and Switched to the regular broadcasting...

Carlo_Carrera

Throughout their racing history Porsche has almost always partnered with an outside race team to run their factory supported cars. The legendary 917s were raced with JW Automotive as the race team partner.

Expecting their first year effort to be successful might be a bit overconfident but I agree what they produced is beneath the brand's heritage.

Big congratulations has to go to Ferrari, what a result, first overall win in fifty years and in their first year back in the top class. Nice work. Makes me wonder what is wrong with their F1 team.

Carlo_Carrera

I think they are running the 2019 based version of the RSR. It just isn't technically advanced enough to compete anymore.

Carlo_Carrera

skl

Even though I'm obviously a Porsche guy, I was rooting for the Peugeots- to me, they look absolutely awesome and so different. The 908's they ran back in the late 2000's was one of the neatest looking sports racing cars ever...

ProCoach

LeMans is a little like the Indy 500, the Rolex 24 at Daytona, the 12 Hours of Sebring, the 24 Hour races at the Nurburgring and at Spa in that there are so many factors that affect the outcome that it is “the race that picks the winner.” Not the other way around.

Early on, the Jota 963 was leading overall and making it look easy. Then, the three Penske factory entries were in ominous formation not far behind the two leaders. A combination of Ye’s and Estre’s accidents, plus a bunch of mechanical issues took them all out of contention.

I’m not embarrassed for Porsche at all. Just not their race…

Zhao

Dont follow him or whatever, but if someone wants to throw money at racing they can do whatever they want provided they have enough so 0% of me is interested in 'chasing the dream aspect' for giving him brownie points. To me it is somewhat embarrassing for the sport telling people they're ready for the big boy events just because they wrote a cheque. Work your skill level up to that, don't just surround yourself by people propping your ego up or whatever claiming you're ready...

Makes for good tv though;


Also puts another car on teh track and that usually means co-drivers getting seats that wouldn't normally have so I'm not entirely against it... but it's still embarrassing. It's like the olympics allowing some old billionaire to run the 100 meter.

laranja

The above video is good
because it points out why Ferrari built it's own LMH car, while Porsche's efforts are based on the LMDh platform.

( )

The investment in development costs is probably $100M / yr less for Porsche. Ferrari re-allocated costs from their F1 efforts after the F1 cost cap.

I think the Ferraris had more raw pace for LeMans and Porsche may be behind for a while.

brake dust

Agree, once Porsche went the LMDh route, I lost total interest. Did not like the "spec" Grand Am Series and this new format feels the same. Guess Porsche was thinking BOP would level the playing field (don't like BOP for LMP cars either).

M13S

In GT class
8 Porsches
7 Ferraris
5 Astin Martin's
1 Corvette


I'd say the vette had quite the day.

John H

Racing is one of the only professional sports you can buy your way into. It's almost always been that way and will only get worse as costs rise. I'm surprised other sports team owners haven't sold spots on the bench...