{"id":310158,"date":"2025-11-26T15:13:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-26T15:13:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/310158\/"},"modified":"2025-11-26T15:13:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-26T15:13:09","slug":"porsche-penske-confirms-2026-imsa-driver-line-up-after-wec-exit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/310158\/","title":{"rendered":"Porsche Penske confirms 2026 IMSA driver line-up after WEC exit"},"content":{"rendered":"

Porsche Penske Motorsport<\/a> has announced the six drivers that will represent the team in the 2026 IMSA SportsCar Championship.<\/p>\n

Laurens Vanthoor<\/a> and Kevin Estre<\/a> will move over from Porsche\u2019s now-defunct World Endurance Championship programme and reunite in IMSA\u2019s GTP class, sharing the #6 Porsche 963 LMDh for the full season.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The pair will be joined in the five enduros by Matt Campbell<\/a>, who will move into a reduced role at the team after winning this year\u2019s GTP title alongside Mathieu Jaminet<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Felipe Nasr<\/a> will remain behind the wheel of the #7 Porsche but will have a new team-mate in the form of Julien Andlauer<\/a>, who represented PPM as a factory driver in the WEC this year.<\/p>\n

Laurin Heinrich<\/a> has been named as the third driver for the #7 car after making his debut LMDh outing in this month\u2019s WEC finale in Bahrain, where he replaced team regular Michael Christensen<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It remains unclear whether Porsche will add a fourth driver to each car for the season-opening Daytona 24 Hours in January.<\/p>\n

\"Podium: <\/p>\n

Podium: third place #6 Porsche Penske Motorsport Porsche 963: Kevin Estre, Laurens Vanthoor<\/p>\n

Photo by: Andreas Beil<\/p>\n

Porsche\u2019s exit from Hypercar after just three seasons has forced a downsizing of its LMDh driver roster.<\/p>\n

Instead of having eight full-timers across the two programmes, it will have just four drivers racing the 963 for the full season, supplemented by two additional drivers for the Michelin Endurance Cup.<\/p>\n

Notable absentees from Porsche\u2019s 2026 line-up are Christensen and Nick Tandy<\/a>. The latter made history at the beginning of this year when he became the first driver to complete the unofficial sextuple crown of endurance racing\u2019s six biggest events – winning the 24-hour Le Mans, Daytona, Nurburging and Spa-Francorchamps races, as well as Petit Le Mans and the Sebring 12 Hours outright..<\/p>\n

Newly-crowned IMSA champion Jaminet is also departing, with Genesis having already announced that he will move to its new Hypercar project in 2026.<\/p>\n

Porsche and Penske dominated the 2025 IMSA season, sweeping the drivers\u2019, teams\u2019 and manufacturers\u2019 titles. The German manufacturer also scored a victory in the WEC, but ended the year third in the championship, behind winner Ferrari and second-placed Toyota.<\/p>\n

It missed out on a record-extending 20th-win at Le Mans 24 Hours as Estre, Vanthoor and Campbell finished second to the race-winning #83 Ferrari of Robert Kubica<\/a>, Phil Hanson and Yifei Ye.<\/p>\n

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– The Autosport.com Team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Porsche Penske Motorsport has announced the six drivers that will represent the team in the 2026 IMSA SportsCar…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":310159,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,66569,175958,817,813,816,54753,175956,175957,85,94075],"class_list":["post-310158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-daytona-international-speedway","tag-daytona-november-testing","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-imsa","tag-porsche-penske-confirms-2026-imsa-driver-line-up-after-wec-exit","tag-porsche-penske-motorsport","tag-sports","tag-wec"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=310158"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310158\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/310159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=310158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=310158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=310158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}