10/11/2025

Why WEC’s Bahrain finale was the ‘biggest disappointment’ for Porsche 963 programme

Porsche has singled out Saturday’s World Endurance Championship finale in Bahrain as the ‘biggest disappointment” for its three-year 963 LMDh programme.

The German manufacturer bowed out of the Hypercar class of the WEC with a nightmare race in Bahrain, as its two factory Penske prototypes finished a lap down in 13th and 14th positions.

This marked the first time since 963’s debut in 2024 that it failed to score a point in a WEC race, as a myriad of reasons contributed to its collapse down the order.

Porsche arrived into the bonus-points race with a shot at both the drivers’ and the manufacturers’ title, and was cautiously optimistic about its chance despite facing a tall order to eclipse Ferrari on both counts.

However, instead of putting up a fight to the Prancing Horse, it ended up losing second place in the manufacturers’ fight to Toyota, while drivers Kevin Estre and Laurens Vanthoor also dropped to fourth in the final order.

When asked what was the biggest disappointment for Porsche in its three seasons in the top class in WEC, where it scored five wins (including one with Jota) and the 2024 drivers’ title, LMDh project director Urs Kuratle told Motorsport.com: “Saturday’s race. Not because it was the last one, but because of the result.

“Le Mans 23 was not [the one]. We screwed up Le Mans 23. If you screw up yourself, then it’s not good, but then you have at least something that you can work on, that you can improve.

“Le Mans 23 was definitely not. Le Mans 24 was also not. Le Mans 25 was also not.

#6 Porsche Penske Motorsport Porsche 963: Kevin Estre, Laurens Vanthoor, Pascal Wehrlein

Photo by: Shameem Fahath / Motorsport Network

“On Saturday, we came here and had the chance to win the championship. We would have liked to do that.

“The minimal goal would have been second place in the world championship. We lost the championship without doing anything wrong. That was the problem.”

The title-contending #6 Porsche shared by Estre, Vanthoor and Matt Campbell qualified 18th after a lock-up from Estre, but the crew were able to haul the car inside the top 10 by the end of the third hour.

Porsche, like almost all other teams, pitted under the mid-race safety car deployed following the crash between the #38 Cadillac V-Series.R of Jenson Button and the #54 AF Corse Ferrari 296 GT3 of Thomas Flohr. But it brought both its factory cars into the pits again at the end of the fourth hour to essentially revert to its original strategy.

“That was an intense discussion and analysis in the background,” Kuratle explained the decision. “You start the race, you see where you stand, wherever it is during the race, and then you go back to the present. You come back and calculate how the race could go. That was the reason.”

Porsche’s misery was compounded by its struggles on medium tyres, which was the dominant compound during the night hours in Bahrain. Estre also struggled to ‘switch on’ the set of tyres he had previously used in qualifying.

Ultimately, the 963 could not reproduce the promising pace from practice, where it had been the fourth-fastest manufacturer despite an unfavourable Balance of Performance.

“What went wrong? That the race never came to us. That went wrong,” lamented Kuratle.

“I think it was not surprising that we were there, what we saw in the race.

“What we saw was that the practice sessions in the long runs looked somewhat better than what the race showed. But in the end, when you look at the numbers, it was not surprising, I have to say.

#6 Porsche Penske Motorsport Porsche 963: Kevin Estre, Laurens Vanthoor, Pascal Wherlein

Photo by: Shameem Fahath / Motorsport Network

“The team did nothing wrong, of course and there has not yet been such a detailed analysis, but we didn’t have any rough patches.

“In the end, I think it was more a discussion of kilos and kilowatts instead of tyres.”

The final nail in the coffin was the timing of the last caution period, with Porsche having both pitted its cars just before the VSC was deployed.

“That’s racing, as they say,” Kuratle described. “Of course, that was unfortunate, if you lose the whole thing three quarters of an hour before the end of a season.”

Following its exit from Hypercar, Porsche will continue to race in IMSA’s GTP ranks, where it won back-to-back titles in 2024 and ‘25.