The Penske ORECA, driven by Dane Cameron, Felipe Nasr and Emmanuel Collard, finished eighth in class in the Sebring 1000-mile race, and fourth in class in the Spa 6 Hours. But the third round of the World Endurance Championship season, the 90th edition of the 24 Hours of Le Mans, will be the final outing for the entry #5 car.
An official team statement said the squad is “will instead turn its attention to putting maximum effort into testing and preparation of its Porsche Penske Motorsport LMDh program” ahead of its debut in both WEC and IMSA in 2023. The Porsche’s race debut will come in the Daytona 24 Hours next January.
“We are very appreciative of our time in WEC this year and we have been able to make the most of our time on track this season,” said Team Penske president Tim Cindric. “As an organisation, we didn’t have a lot of experience within WEC, so running the races in 2022 has allowed us to learn the tracks, the rules and understand how a race weekend operates.
“We were able to gather a lot of feedback and information over the first two races and we expect to learn even more at Le Mans.
“Fortunately, our LMDh program is progressing quickly, so we need to focus that to ensure we are prepared for the start of the 2023 season.”
Porsche this month also revealed that it has the capacity to supply and service two of the LMDh cars developed in conjunction with Multimatic Motorsport for WEC and IMSA in 2023.
Porsche Motorsport boss Thomas Laudenbach told Autosport: “It could be up to two in each [series]. We are saying that is the maximum and we can’t do more than that.
“One thing is clear, it is not about as selling as many cars as we can - that’s not our goal.
“With such a high-level prototype, if we sell a car to a race team, first of all it is important that the team is at a certain level to handle it and then that we can support them.
“We want to make sure they have everything to be competitive.”
