Instead of competing for the title, Porsche experiences a bitter weekend in Bahrain as it bids farewell to the WEC: for the first time ever, the team fails to score any points.
Porsche has described the World Endurance Championship (WEC) finale in Bahrain as the “biggest disappointment” of its three-year LMDh era. The German manufacturer bid farewell to the Hypercar class with a difficult race: Both Penske Motorsport factory Porsches finished the season finale one lap behind the leader in 13th and 14th place.
For the first time since the Porsche 963 debuted in 2023, the sports car failed to score any points in a WEC race. Various factors led to the team falling well short of expectations. Porsche had gone into the final race with realistic chances of winning the title – both in the manufacturers’ and drivers’ standings. However, optimism quickly gave way to disillusionment: instead of fighting Ferrari for the title, they lost second place in the manufacturers’ standings to Toyota. Drivers Kevin Estre and Laurens Vanthoor fell back to fourth place in the overall standings.
Biggest disappointment in three WEC years
When asked what had been the biggest disappointment of the three Hypercar seasons for him, he replied, “The race on Saturday. Not because it was the last one, but because of the result.”
“It wasn’t Le Mans 2023. We made mistakes there ourselves. That’s not good, of course, but at least you can learn from it and improve. It wasn’t Le Mans 2024 either, nor was it Le Mans 2025. But on Saturday, we had the chance to win the championship. The minimum goal was second place in the world championship. We lost the title without doing anything wrong. That was the problem,” Kuratle continued.
The title contender with start number 6, driven by Estre, Vanthoor, and Matt Campbell, had only managed 18th place in qualifying after Estre braked too late, but worked its way into the top 10 by the end of the third hour of the race.
How Porsche explains the back-and-forth in strategy
Like many teams, Porsche took advantage of the safety car phase in the middle of the race, which was called after an accident between Jenson Button’s Cadillac and Thomas Flohr’s AF Corse Ferrari, to make a pit stop. An hour later, however, they returned to their original strategy and brought both cars back into the pits.
“That was an intense discussion in the background,” explained Kuratle. “You start, see where you stand, and adjust your strategy during the race. Then you calculate how things might continue. That was the reason.”
The medium tires, which were the preferred compound during the night hours, were particularly problematic. Estre also had difficulty getting the set of tires he had already used in qualifying back up to temperature. As a result, the 963 was unable to confirm the potential shown in the practice sessions, in which Porsche was the fourth-fastest manufacturer despite an unfavorable balance of performance.
Everything lost in the last half hour
“What went wrong? The race never came to us. That was the problem,” said Kuratle. “In practice, things looked a little better on the long runs, but ultimately the result was not surprising. The team didn’t do anything wrong, but a detailed analysis is still pending. In the end, it was more of a discussion about kilos and kilowatts than about tires.”
The final setback came with the last virtual safety car phase, which was called shortly after the last pit stop for both factory Porsches. “That’s racing,” said Kuratle. “Of course, it was unfortunate to lose everything half an hour before the end of the season. But it is what it is.”
After leaving the Hypercar class, Porsche will remain active in the North American IMSA GTP program, where the factory team won the championship title in both 2024 and 2025.
