Porsche has struggled to challenge Toyota and Ferrari on its return to the top echelon of sportscar racing this year, with April’s Portimao round the only time its 963 LMDh car finished on the podium.
At the most recent round in Monza, Porsche was only the fourth-fastest manufacturer in the Hypercar class, as Peugeot made a big leap to take third behind the winning-Toyota and second-placed Ferrari.
But Makowiecki, who shares the #5 Porsche 963 with Dane Cameron and Michael Christensen, is hoping Porsche can return to the podium as the WEC moves to Asia for the final leg of the season.
Asked how he would like to close out the campaign, the Frenchman told Motorsport.com: “By a podium would be mega. A podium somewhere.
“I think probably we have a better chance here than Bahrain. But let's see, we never know, because in Bahrain we could see the Ferraris sometimes struggle. Maybe Bahrain could be hard also for them.”
Pressed on why he thinks Fuji would be more suited to the Porsche, Makowiecki explained that the 963 LMDh lacks the kind of consistency required to excel in the dry/night Bahrain 8 Hours title decider.
“Because in general the consistency is not where we are the strongest - and probably Bahrain is the hardest track for that. That's why.
“Let's see, but I would suspect Bahrain could be harder for us.”
Makowiecki explained that Porsche suffers from higher degradation and a general lack of grip, but feels the German marque needs to improve in every area to take the fight to the front.
“l. I think there is not one part where we are lacking more,” he said. “It's a more global approach where we need to improve a little bit everywhere and if we do this we will be stronger.
“For sure, we miss a little bit of speed. At the beginning it was mainly high speed but now we compensated and we are significantly better in high speed.
“I think now in general we are lacking grip or we aren't able to generate the optimum grip. And the second thing where we need to be a lot stronger is on tyre deg and [our rivals] are a lot
more consistent.”
While a podium might still be on the cards, Makowiecki’s team-mate Christensen believes that a victory in the final two races of the season is out of the question, highlighting the gap to the cars at the front of the field.
“I don’t expect us to win with the way it looks at the moment,” he told Motorsport.com. “Of course I wish and hope [to win] but I’ve been in the game long enough and I am realistic enough to know that we are not gonna find a second overnight.
“We are going in the right direction, it took longer to understand the direction we need to go than we hoped, but to say we are gonna win a race this year is optimistic.”
Porsche still ‘not where it wants to be’
Porsche has made significant strides with the 963 LMDh since the start of the programme, although results have proved hard to come in WEC, even as it has bagged two wins in IMSA SportsCar Championship with the same car.
Urs Kuratle, the head of Porsche’s factory LMDh programme, says that the German manufacturer still has work to do to improve the package, admitting that the 963 is not as reliable or quick as it would have liked at this stage of the campaign.
“We improved a lot since the starting point,” Kuratle told Motorsport.com. “We came the long way and we are definitely not where we want to be with the car, the performance of the car and the reliability of the car.
“We did good progress but also we still have some work to do with the driveability to combine.
“Driveability of the car is our car's weakest point, combined with reliability, because we still struggle with some reliability points, even though the distance we can do with no technical problems is increasing.
“Unfortunately, we showed this year in the 24 hours we are not ready but we keep on working hard on all those points."
