The Porsche 963 LMDh Is Ready For Racing—and Le Mans

In just the first half of 2022, Team Penske and the Porsche 963 LMDh have already logged more miles than the furthest distance that has ever been recorded in a single 24 Hours of Le Mans endurance race. With that much time already in its logbook, Porsche finally decided its racing livery was ready to be revealed to the world. In 2023, the Porsche Penske Motorsport 963 LMDh will take on the top echelon of endurance racing around the world with IMSA here in the U.S. and the FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC) overseas. That schedule also includes the 24 Hours of Le Mans, where Porsche's last overall win  occurred five years ago. That's not all, as Porsche closed the announcement with the news it will also offer a customer race car program to go along with the works effort cars.

At the 2022 Goodwood Festival of Speed, Porsche and Penske unveiled the 963 LMDh in its full racing livery, which is done in the traditional Porsche factory-racing colors of white, red and, black. At the same time, Porsche also announced the driver lineup for IMSA and WEC, with Porsche factory-backed drivers joining two accomplished sports car racers from California and Brazil.

Those drivers will take the 680-hp hybrid race cars out on their first competitive laps at the 2023 Rolex 24 at Daytona in January. There, under the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Series banner, the 963 will compete in the newly formed GTP class, recalling the early glory days of prototype racing in North America. The last time a Porsche raced in the GTP class was with the 962 in 1993, when it was outclassed by Nissan and Mazda by 1988.

See All 15 Photos15

Much like those GTP cars, however, the LMDh machines are state of the art for their era. Instead of 3.0-liter flat-sixes making 695 hp, these new Porsches will make 680 hp using a 4.6-liter twin-turbo V-8 based upon the LMP2-class RS Spyder that competed successfully in IMSA (also in association with Penske Racing) and abroad between 2005 and 2010. While the 963 takes some design cues from the 956 and 962, the car's rear is inspired by the 992-generation 911. The chassis is manufactured by Multimatic, while Bosch, Williams Advanced Engineering, and Xtrac will provide the other elements, including the hybrid power components. For the IMSA side, these parts will come together at Penske Motorsports in Mooresville, North Carolina, while FIA WEC cars will be handled by the Mannheim, Germany, branch.

See All 15 Photos15

On top of the factory-backed effort with Team Penske—and in tradition of the 956, 962, and other Porsche race cars—the 963 will also be offered to customer teams. Porsche didn't offer up a cost for these privateer models, but said it will announce the program in "the next few days." That's exciting to think about, as there are so far no privateer-effort LMDh programs. The cars competing in LMDh are 100-percent OEM efforts (which is important to the health of the class), but the inclusion of privateers is always good for endurance racing. With Porsche offering a potentially competitive 963 for private teams to purchase and run is a great step for endurance racing and fans: The more cars that compete, the more exciting the class will become.