Starting their World Endurance Championship Hypercar programmes one year behind the likes of fellow LMDh entrants Porsche and Cadillac was always likely to mean a period of playing catchup for Alpine and Lamborghini in 2024. Two rounds into the season, that prediction has been borne out and both marques are experiencing similar growing pains. In both camps, the message is very much the same – we need time.
Although LMDh machines use a spec rear-axle hybrid system, compared to the bespoke systems used on the four-wheel-drive Le Mans Hypercars from Toyota, Ferrari and Peugeot, they are still enormously complex beasts. Getting its 963s working efficiently was not the work of a moment for the factory Penske Porsche Motorsport team that has run two cars on both sides of the Atlantic in the WEC and IMSA SportsCar Championship since last season, despite a totally open book for information sharing and regular crossover of senior personnel between the two teams.
