The decision to delay an update centred on a new crankshaft for the 963’s 4.6-litre twin-turbo V8 has been made after discussions with WEC organisers the FIA and the Automobile Club l’Ouest and IMSA in North America, which jointly govern the LMDh category.
The FIA and the ACO demanded that the engine had to come on stream at the Imola WEC round in April in order to assess its performance over the the Italian event and then the Spa race prior to Le Mans on 15/16 June, Porsche’s 963 project chief Urs Kuratle has revealed.
That would have left insufficient time to undertake the necessary endurance testing before the homologation of the engine and to produce a sufficient supply of units for the factory Porsche Penske Motorsport squad and the customers teams.
“We do not do it in Le Mans, a decision is done,” said Kuratle.
“The governing bodies set a clear goal, clear targets how we had to implement the crankshaft and it won’t allow us to do it before Le Mans.
“We said, ‘Okay it is a challenge and we try to do it’, but the risk was too big.”
The timeline presented to Porsche by the governing bodies was compounded by the fact that the Imola WEC round clashes with the Long Beach IMSA SportsCar Championship event on the weekend of 20/21 April.
That meant it would have had to convert a supply of engines for four PPM 963s run across the two series, and the five customer cars from Jota, Proton and JDC-Miller in order for them all to start using the new configuration from the same weekend.
Source: Autosport