Porsche has confirmed that it will make its return to the world-famous 24 Hours of Le Mans in 2023. The Stuttgart carmaker which has the most number of victories by a single manufacturer will look into adding more titles under its name. Porsche will now be looking into wining the races in all three categories; fully electric vehicles in the FIA Formula E, hybrid vehicles in the Le Mans and internal combustion engines for the GT racing.
Recently, Porsche has launched the 911 GT3 Cup, a race car based on the current 922 generation. The power unit is the same 4.0-litre 6-cylinder horizontally opposed engine but now this motor makes 510 HP as opposed to the earlier 485 HP. This car will race in the Porsche Mobil 1 Supercup and along with that, it will also take part in the National Carrera Cups in Germany, Asia, France, Benelux, and North America.
The new LMDh draft rules state that the cars should weight 1030 kg and have 500 kW peak of combined power from the engine and the hybrid system. The specification of the hybrid system will be standard across all the cars including the control electronics. The chassis will be same as that of the current second-tier LMP2 class and as of now, four different manufacturers have been officially approved to build the chassis, though Porsche is yet to decide its chassis manufacturer. Toyota and Peugeot are also developing their hypercars for the 2021 season of 24 Hours of Le Mans and will take on the hybrid cars by the use of performance balancing to even the competition.
For the 2023 season, Porsche will deploy a new hybrid prototype challenger under the new LMDh regulations. The old iconic rivalry will be back with Porsche taking on Audi, both of which are part of the Volkswagen Group and among them, they have won a combined total of 34 wins in the 24 Hours of Le Mans history. Porsche also confirmed that it will take part in other endurance races like US IMSA series and more. Porsche is also open to selling cars to customer teams like they used to do in the 1980s and 1990s under the new LMDh regulation.