Porsche Podiums The Brickyard

There are afternoons at the racetrack when everything goes according to plan, and then there are afternoons when merely emerging from Turn 1 with all the bodywork attached feels like a small victory.

Porsche experienced a little of both at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

The Dr. Ing. h.c. F. Porsche AG factory team returned to the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship podium in the penultimate race of the season, with the No. 6 Porsche 963 finishing third after an eventful 2-hour-and-40-minute contest. It was Porsche’s first podium since April and, perhaps more importantly, kept alive a mathematical—if decidedly slender—chance of defending its championship at the season finale.

The No. 7 Porsche, unfortunately, had a much shorter and considerably less pleasant story to tell.

Trouble arrived almost immediately

As the field charged into the first corner, all three Porsche 963s found themselves caught up in collisions. It was the sort of opening-lap confusion that happens when a large collection of very fast cars arrives at the same small piece of pavement with considerably more ambition than available real estate.

The No. 7 got the worst of it. The No. 6, remarkably, came through virtually untouched. And that made all the difference.

Frenchman Kévin Estre and former Porsche Junior Laurin Heinrich of Germany settled down to the business of salvaging a race from the opening-lap confusion. With strong lap times, smart strategy and a Porsche 963 that had somehow escaped the first-corner melee without meaningful damage, they worked their way to third place by the finish.

For the No. 7 crew, meanwhile, the race had essentially been decided before it had properly begun. Julien Andlauer was spun in the opening-corner incident, leaving the Daytona- and Sebring-winning Porsche in the path of the approaching LMP2 field. With nowhere useful to go, the cars behind struck the 963, inflicting enough damage to require extensive repairs.

Andlauer and Brazilian teammate Felipe Nasr eventually returned to the race, but by then they were more than 20 laps behind. From that point on, Indianapolis became less a race than a very long test session. The No. 7 was ultimately classified eleventh in the GTP class.

“We got the most out of the No. 6 car today,” says Thomas Laudenbach, Vice President Porsche Motorsport. “The comeback to the podium was impressive and the result of a perfect team effort. Unfortunately, despite this result, our hopes of winning the championship again are now purely theoretical. Nevertheless, we’ll give it our all at the finale at Road Atlanta. Car No. 7 had terrible luck on the first lap. It was a very unfortunate incident. I hope we’ll have luck on our side at Petit Le Mans.”

“We’re back on the podium for the first time since April. That feels really good,” said Urs Kuratle, Director Factory Motorsport LMDh. “We did everything right strategically today. That, combined with the drivers’ strong performances, earned us this result. Congratulations to BMW on the race win.”

The championship arithmetic now requires a certain amount of optimism.

Porsche trails the leader in the manufacturers’ standings by 136 points, with as many as 165 points potentially available if all cars start the finale. So the door remains open, though not very far. Heinrich remains mathematically alive in the drivers’ championship as well. He heads to Road Atlanta 147 points behind championship leader Jack Aitken of Great Britain.

The factory cars weren’t the only Porsches to discover that Indianapolis Turn 1 had developed an appetite for prototype bodywork. JDC-Miller MotorSports’ No. 5 Porsche 963 was also swept into the opening-lap collision through no fault of its own. Tijmen van der Helm had little opportunity to escape the confusion, and the resulting damage forced the car into the pits for repairs. By the time it rejoined, the No. 5 had fallen behind the entire GT field—a discouraging view from the cockpit of a GTP prototype.

Still, van der Helm and Swiss Porsche works driver Nico Müller spent the remainder of the afternoon steadily recovering what they could. By the checkered flag, they had worked their way back to ninth overall.

GT Classes: “Rexy” Porsche 911 GT3 R far behind after penalty

For a while, the familiar green-and-purple Porsche 911 GT3 R known as “Rexy” looked capable of giving Porsche another reason to celebrate.

The AO Racing entry ran in podium contention in GTD Pro before a safety-car period turned its race upside down. Factory driver Nick Tandy was forced to enter the closed pit lane for fuel. During the resulting emergency stop, the crew performed more work than the regulations permitted under those circumstances.

The price was steep: a 60-second penalty.

In a race this competitive, a minute can feel like a geological era. Rexy dropped to tenth in class and never recovered the lost ground. Wright Motorsports had a less dramatic afternoon in GTD, which is often exactly what you want from an endurance race. Its No. 120 Porsche 911 GT3 R put together a solid run and finished sixth in class.

And so everything now points south, toward the wooded hills of Georgia.

The IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship concludes on October 3 at Road Atlanta with Petit Le Mans, the ten-hour season finale. Porsche will arrive with championship hopes that exist more comfortably on a calculator than in the betting window, but they exist nonetheless. And ten hours at Road Atlanta is a very long time.