JOTA and JDC-Miller received one example each of Porsche’s hybrid contender on Friday, a day after Matt Campbell shook down both cars around the German marque’s Weissach testing facility.
It makes Porsche the first manufacturer to supply an LMDh or an LMH car to a privateer, having stated from the very beginning of the project that it wants customer entries to complement the factory Porsche Penske Motorsport effort.
JOTA will debut its 963 LMDh at this weekend’s Spa round of the World Endurance Championship, boosting the Hypercar entry to 13 cars.
Apart from the JOTA Porsche, there will be an additional Cadillac V-Series.R fielded by Chip Ganassi Racing in preparation for the General Motors marque’s return to the Le Mans 24 Hours in June.
In all, 38 cars will race across all three classes of the WEC at the Belgian venue, with GTE Am again attracting the biggest field of all with 14 entries.
Meanwhile, JDC-Miller will race its customer Porsche from the Laguna Seca event on the IMSA SportsCar Championship calendar next month.
The 963 LMDh destined for JDC-Miller left Weissach on Monday and will be handed over to the team at the Chicago airport on Wednesday. Porsche was responsible for both the transportation and custom clearance of the car, which will make its debut at the fourth race of the 2023 IMSA season on May 14.
Porsche is currently working on a second batch of LMDh cars for Proton Competition, which will run a twin campaign in WEC and IMSA with one car each.
However, Proton doesn’t intend to join WEC’s Hypercar class until Monza in July and its IMSA programme is not expected to begin until the Road America round in August.
Although Porsche made a difficult return to the top echelon of sportscar racing at the Daytona 24 Hours in June, the 963 LMDh has since shown its speed and proved to be a competitive machine, scoring its first IMSA victory earlier this month at Long Beach.
Over in WEC, the successor to the Porsche 919 Hybrid recorded its first podium finish at Portimao, with Kevin Estre, Laurens Vanthoor and Andre Lotterer finishing third behind the dominant Toyota and the second-placed Ferrari.
Porsche will have three factory cars at the Le Mans 24 Hours this year, with its two WEC entries supplemented by an extra 963 that otherwise races in IMSA.
