Porsche Penske Considering Wehrlein for 6H Spa

Photo: Porsche

Porsche Penske Motorsport is considering drafting Pascal Wehrlein into one of its factory Porsche 963s for next month’s 6 Hours of Spa, in further preparation for the German’s debut at the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

The German manufacturer is currently entered for the third round of the FIA World Endurance Championship season with its two-driver pairings of Michael Christensen and Julien Andlauer (No. 5) and Laurens Vanthoor and Kevin Estre (No. 6) due to both Mathieu Jaminet and Matt Campbell being on IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship duty at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca that weekend.

While BMW and Heart of Racing Team are expected to utilize two-driver lineups for Spa, Porsche Penske managing director Jonathan Diuguid didn’t rule out the possibility of the 2023-24 ABB FIA Formula E world champion to make his WEC debut one race ahead of Le Mans, where he’ll be placed in the team’s third Porsche 963.

Wehrlein is available for the Spa event, with no Formula E race commitments that weekend.

“We’re considering all options to make sure he’s prepared,” said Diuguid. “I think that’s something that’s in discussion. We’ll look at it after the Imola race and decide how we’re going to go racing at Spa.”

The 30-year-old former DTM driver has been integrated into Porsche Penske’s pre-Le Mans testing program, which included a 32-hour endurance test at Motorland Aragon, as well as a two-day outing at Spa-Francorchamps.

“He drove in the Aragon endurance test, participated in the Spa test and obviously ran in the Daytona 24 Hours (with JDC-Miller Motorsports), so he’s got a decent amount of time under his belt,” said Diuguid.

“He’s performing well. I think probably the biggest thing he’s lacking is just race exposure and WEC race procedures and those kind of things.

“Being comfortable with the complexity of the car is [also another thing]. There’s obviously a lot of default switches and fault protocols and things like that.

“Beyond just the track time, he’s spending a lot of time on the simulator to go through that kind of stuff.”

Diuguid, meanwhile, said it hasn’t yet been determined who will serve as the team’s reserve driver for the French endurance classic, although revealed that fellow Porsche Formula E-contracted driver Nico Mueller was on hand at the Aragon test.

“We haven’t announced the reserve driver yet but we’re looking at all options,” he said. “Obviously Antonio [Felix da Costa] is racing a LMP2 car, so he’s got a race drive already.

“We’ll see where that all shakes out. He’s on-site. I think it just depends if we want to have Nico or somebody else there, or if we’re okay with Antonio being on-site and having to pull him out of the LMP2 car [if needed].

“Nico obviously drove the Peugeot. He drove with JDC at Sebring, so he also has time in the 963 at Sebring. We gave him some time at the Aragon endurance test too, just for him to engage with the team.

“We have all options. The good thing about Le Mans is that it’s based in Europe so you can get somebody there pretty quickly if you have to.”

Diuguid: No Current Plans to Reshuffle Lineup in Triple Crown Quest

With Vanthoor set to compete in his season-long No. 6 Porsche and fellow Rolex 24 at Daytona and Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring winners Nick Tandy and Felipe Nasr in the third entry for Le Mans, Diuguid dismissed any ideas of shuffling the lineup to place all three drivers together in the same car as part of a historic bid to claim the ‘Triple Crown’ of endurance race wins in the same year.

There has been no driver in history that has won Daytona, Sebring and Le Mans overall all in the same year, let alone all three in a single lineup.

“Not at the moment,” Diuguid said on a potential driver shuffle. “Obviously they’re competing for a world championship so we’re trying to keep the driver groups together.

“To be fair, Laurens did a good job with Nick and Felipe in those two races but all six of the drivers in those races performed extremely well. We didn’t feel like we had a driver performance deficit in any of those cases.

“It also spreads our chances to do it with at least one of them.

“We’re happy with our driver pairings and driver crews. They’re doing a good job.”