Matt Campbell took the big step up from GT racing to prototypes like a duck to water, dropping into the factory Penske-run Porsche 963 programme in the IMSA SportsCar Championship alongside Felipe Nasr.
They finished fourth in points, scoring victory at Road America, and his switch to the team’s World Endurance Championship squad for 2024 can be viewed as a promotion.
Campbell’s stunning raw pace was reflected with two poles at Laguna Seca and Indianapolis, although he blotted his copybook with a big shunt on his hot lap at Sebring. He didn’t completely forsake his 911 GT3 roots though, finding time to finish a close second in the Bathurst 12 Hour and win an Australian GT race at Adelaide.
Campbell pays tribute to team-mates for “easier” switch from GTs
After making his name in recent years producing some stunning results in Porsche’s GT machinery, Matt Campbell got the call – along with his 2022 IMSA GTD Pro co-champion Mathieu Jaminet – to step up to IMSA’s reborn GTP class for its return to prototype racing. So, how was that journey for the 28-year-old Queenslander?
“The step was smaller than I expected, which has been nice,” says Campbell.
“Obviously I’ve been a part of this programme from the very beginning of development. It’s been great, with all the other drivers and engineers, that we’ve been learning the 963 together.
“I think the rapid rate of progress has really benefited us, it’s a key aspect that we were all involved since the beginning, so the evolution of the car has been easier for us GT drivers coming from Porsche into the prototype world. It’s been a cool journey so far.”
Porsche suffered a rough start to its IMSA campaign, hitting reliability issues in the Daytona 24 Hours and then both of its cars were taken out by a late shunt in the Sebring 12 Hours.
"The evolution of the car has been easier for us GT drivers coming from Porsche into the prototype world. It’s been a cool journey so far" Matt Campbell
“It wasn’t easy in the beginning, especially for us as we were the guinea pig for the hybrid system,” Campbell admits. “The testing was a little bit underwhelming initially, for what we were expecting, due to a lot of failures and so forth.
“If you look at where we started in Daytona, to where we got to at the end of the season, it’s been phenomenal. A big aspect for us in Porsche Motorsport is to have had the benefit of dual programmes in the WEC and IMSA, so from weekend to weekend we were bringing software updates and developing at a rapid rate.
“At the start of the season, we had bigger gaps between events so it was only when we got into the second half [after the Le Mans 24 Hours] that we made rapid progress globally. Every week, there was another page in the manual for the steering wheel to learn! I think we have more buttons, toggles and thumb rotaries than Formula 1 now. It’s busy at the wheel!”
