Prior to joining forces on the 963 LMDh car, Porsche and Penske last worked when the American team was running the RS Spyder LMP2 car. 📝 james_newbold found out why ex-enduro racer Sascha Maassen picked it as his favourite car ⬇️
The band is back together. Penske and Porsche have teamed up to run the new 963 LMDh car in both the World Endurance Championship and IMSA SportsCar Championship. And expectations are rightly high after the huge success enjoyed by their last collaboration on the RS Spyder LMP2 project, which yielded American Le Mans Series class titles in all three years that the factory programme ran.
“Sitting in the beginning in a wooden box and designing where the buttons go – for me, it was like, ‘Why are they asking me?’” says Maassen. “I was so honoured.” Persistent problems with the lightweight transverse gearbox caused the RS Spyder’s planned debut at the 2005 Petit Le Mans to be postponed. And even after Maassen stuck the car on class pole at Laguna Seca, he and his mechanics had little expectation that it would last.
“I remember the call that I got from [Porsche engineer] Roland Kussmaul, and his attitude before he actually said something was so humble and thoughtful, I already knew before he was starting to talk.” After claiming the LMP2 title with Luhr in 2006, Maassen and new partner Briscoe won three times in 2007 but missed out to their team-matesBernhard and Dumas found another gear and went on to take the 2007 title with eight wins from 12 races, as Maassen forged a new partnership with Ryan Briscoe. He regards the Australian as “the strongest team-mate I ever had”, although results often didn’t go their way. Maassen feels he lost out to Bernhard in the weight stakes.