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Yahoo Finance Autos journalist Pras Subramanian visited the prestigious race and sat down with Porsche’s vice president of motorsport, Thomas Laudenbach, to review Porsche’s plans for newer models and hybrids.
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DAYTONA, Fla. – Porsche (DRPRY) triumphed this weekend in the crown jewel of American motorsports, taking victory in the Rolex 24 at Daytona International Speedway with its 963 GTP race car.
The grueling 24-hour race is not only a test of the staying power and functionality of heavy-duty racing teams, but it is also a pressure cooker to test the new generation and reliability. It’s no wonder that more and more major car brands have pledged to compete.
The GTP (Grand Touring Prototype) is the series of the WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, with brands such as Porsche, BMW, Cadillac and Acura competing in futuristic, aerodynamic-focused car races with electrified hybrid powertrains.
It’s this feature (hybrid electric power) that has attracted major automakers to the series, which is now in its second year. A sister series (World Endurance Championship) in Europe has Ferrari, Toyota, Peugeot, Alpine and Lamborghini in its ranks, with Cadillac and Porsche also fielding cars in this series. There’s an explanation for why those brands have chosen to embark on a series with next-generation powertrains, and it’s because they see it as the long-term way to showcase new technologies.
The fans seem to be loving the new hybrid-powered GTP era as well. This past weekend’s Rolex 24 at Daytona had its biggest attendance ever, which builds on last year’s previous record-setting crowd, though exact figures have not been released by the Speedway yet.
“I would say it’s definitely the next step in sports car racing,” Thomas Laudenbach, Porsche’s vice president of motorsports, said in an interview with Yahoo Finance about GTP racing. Laudenbach points out that Porsche was one of the first brands to dedicate itself to the new hybrid. – Series with motor. And since it’s a “brand” in motorsport, Laudenbach said, it allowed other brands to come in as well.
“When you look at the 11 brands they offer [across all WeatherTech Championship categories], that’s the most that’s ever been added in a generation in the sport,” said John Rowady, CEO of rEvolution, a technology company. sports marketing. Great global novelty for automotive marketing: integrating all this innovation into sales channels and how they generate business. »
It was the next step in the racing generation, the hybrid generation, which also drew Porsche into the championship. “This applies to what we do with our road cars,” said Porsche’s Laudenbach.
Porsche’s electrification efforts are well known, and the company has made strides with these types of powertrains over the past decade. The Taycan EV is one of the first successful electric cars on the market and had its most productive sales year with more than 7,500 vehicles sold, in addition to the plug-in hybrids that Porsche has been making for years, starting with the Panamera SE Hybrid. . in 2013.
Overall hybrid sales also increased in the U. S. with 1 million hybrids sold last year, representing a 76% increase in sales according to Edmunds. com.
The old-generation movement that, according to many car brands, originated in racing and made its way into car production, is still in place. Manufacturers have long since stopped using inventions such as windshield wipers and mirrors, which were born in the heyday of motorsport; Now, everything from new batteries and transmissions to software that combines electric power and gasoline is fine-tuned on the track.
Porsche Team race car driver Dane Cameron, one of the drivers of the winning Porsche 963 race car, said the tech “crossover” is apparent in everything they do. “I think in that crossover, the technology crossover and the way [Porsche engineers] lean back and forth to put things on the road cars [from race cars] … they’re not so far away from the race cars in a lot of ways,” Cameron said to Yahoo Finance.
GM Corvette driver Tommy Milner, who competes in the sub-GTP series, said Porsche is the only innovator here.
“I think the relationship between race car and streetcar is as close as it’s ever been with the Corvette [Z06 GT3.R race car],” Milner said from the Corvette factory in Bowling Green, Ky., late last year. “There’s dialogue with the racing team engineers and with the production car engineers as they evolve from generations within the model year; if there are things that the production car engineers can build into that car, they will do so to help the race team.”
Ford CEO Jim Farley told Yahoo Finance last month that he not only needed to expand Ford’s presence in track racing (and off-road trails) globally, but that he wanted to make it a successful and sustainable business.
“We believe that motorsport can simply be a business, a sustainable business that I’ve noticed in my 40-year career,” Farley said at Ford’s season-opening racing event. “We need our careers to be sustainable as a business, so when Jim Farley or whoever is next, we’re going to keep running for the same reasons of keeping our produce fresh, so it’s necessary to make the business healthy enough to make money for careers. “
And whether or not it’s a business, the motorsport business is profitable. Porsche sold more than 400 race cars last year to consumers who race, for example, 911 GT3 R race cars around the world, not to mention the portions and maintenance of those race cars, which also generate revenue.
“Porsche motorsport is not just GTP [factory-owned racing]. It’s really important, but we start from the race, I would even say from the field,” added Porsche’s Laudenbach. “Someone can buy a race car and overtake another. Weekend on track. We had one-make series,” Laudenbach said, referring to series in which each competitor uses the same car and parts, for example, a 911 GT3 R race car. “I think there are more than 30 [Porsche] one-make series around the world,” he said.
Ford is also targeting Porsche in this area, turning various versions of the Mustang sports coupe into racing cars to other levels. Although Ford’s strides in motorsport are bold, it still has a long way to go to catch Porsche on this front: the German automaker has scored 23 overall victories at Daytona, and that’s just one clue.
“I think it’s fair to say that I can’t believe our logo without motorsport,” Laudenbach said very seriously. However, he adds a caveat, with his German accessory and a slight smile, that racing deserves to be “run as a business case. “
There’s no doubt that Ford, GM and the automakers chasing glory on the asphalt of Daytona would also agree.
Pras Subramanian is a journalist for Yahoo Finance. You can see him on Twitter and Instagram.
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