Ferrari and Toyota are Le Mans favorites – however what about Porsche?

Final yr, Porsche arrived at Le Mans as one of many favourites, using the momentum of a robust begin to its WEC marketing campaign. However when it got here all the way down to it, the true battle was between Ferrari and Toyota. In 2025, the German producer involves La Sarthe in a really completely different state of affairs, after a quiet opening trio of races.

What Porsche must lean on, if it’s to chase what could be a record-extending twentieth Le Mans win, is precisely what made it sturdy in final yr’s championship run.

“Our strengths are consistency and reliability. We didn’t have any reliability points final yr throughout the entire season, and never at Le Mans both, so I feel that’s a giant asset,” explains Kevin Estre. “We had quite a lot of issues in yr one, however final season was nice by way of reliability. We didn’t have any bother, and the staff virtually received each race in IMSA, within the U.S.”

“We’ve proven now we have the flexibility, the expertise to win huge races, to win championships. I feel we ran a terrific race final yr at Le Mans – we had been simply lacking a little bit of outright efficiency.”

“There’s sturdy competitors, like we’ve seen over the past three years, however I really feel like this yr it’s even tighter.

“The newcomers from final yr are nonetheless studying and enhancing. You look at the beginning of the season for BMW, Alpine, and even Peugeot exhibiting up right here and there, plus Cadillac arriving with 4 vehicles. I feel it’s going to be an actual battle on monitor.”

Porsche stays Porsche

With its know-how, expertise, and an LMDh prototype that delivered a drivers’ title final yr, would you depend Porsche out? The previous winners stay a stable wager for victory, particularly once you consider a Stability of Efficiency (BoP) distinctive to the Le Mans circuit, which might very effectively shake issues up. That’s what Kevin Estre, who shares the No. 6 automobile with Laurens Vanthoor and Matt Campbell, is banking on.

“You at all times need to depend on Ferrari and Toyota, that’s a given,” the French driver admits. “Cadillac at all times has nice prime pace, they’ve by no means fairly put all of it collectively, however they’re sturdy. Jota’s a terrific staff at Le Mans, we all know that. Alpine has had a extremely stable begin to the yr, and Peugeot might be within the combine…”

“It’s exhausting to rank the pecking order. I feel Ferrari and Toyota are in all probability nonetheless the favourites, and perhaps us. They’re confirmed contenders at Le Mans, they’ve proven it repeatedly. It’s powerful to say, however I hope we’ve improved our package deal a bit and that we’ve received the efficiency wanted to battle for the win.”

Kevin Estre, Porsche Motorsport

Photograph by: Rainier Ehrhardt

As Estre rightly factors out, the beginning of the championship virtually turns into irrelevant on the subject of Le Mans: “It’s a very completely different monitor in comparison with the remaining: we attain prime speeds which are 30 to 40 km/h increased than on different circuits within the championship.”

“There’s a brand new BoP, the monitor traits are completely different, so it reshuffles the deck. We’ll see if we might be as sturdy as final yr over a single lap, and a bit higher within the lengthy stints throughout the race.”

“We’ve received a brand new driver with Matt changing Andre [Lotterer], however the identical engineers, the identical mechanics — there’s no purpose why it shouldn’t work. We all know methods to win races, we all know methods to win championships — we simply want to search out the efficiency.”