Porsche makes shock exit from hyper car endurance racing.

The 2025 season will be Porsche’s last in WEC (World Endurance Championship).

This has come after the decision to end the factory involvement in the hyper-car class as a “comprehensive realignment” in an effort to reduce expenses.

Porsche holds the most victories at the most illustrious endurance race, the 24 Hours of Le Mans, with 19 wins between 1970 and 2017.

Porsche AG ( the parent company) will have full focus on two factory projects within motor sport, being Formula E and their 99X, and the IMSA SportsCar Championship.

Thomas Ludenbach, vice president of Porsche Motorsport said “The development progress we have seen in the first 11 years of Formula E has been huge: in the inaugural year in 2014, drivers had to change cars halfway through the race because batteries wouldn’t last full race distance.”

Within WEC there are different classes for the cars, including Hypercar and LMGT3 prototypes and each class has distinct regulations.

The championship is split into eight rounds, with races taking place in four continents, spanning from six hours to twenty-four.

The German manufacturer will continue in endurance racing through the North American series IMSA (International Motor Sports Association), focusing on LMP2 (Le Mans prototype 2) and GTP (Grand Touring Prototype).

The feature race of this series is the 24 hours of Daytona, however, races also consist of shorter sprint races not only lengthy endurance races.

Endurance racing is standardised by time rather than distance, which would be typically seen in Formula 1.

Teams of three drivers must compete to complete the most amount of laps within that time taking turns in stints within the same car.

Also, unlike in F1, cars can be repaired by the pit crew, and cars are allowed to be refueled, meaning strategy and the pit crew has a big influence on how the team performs.

The USA is one of Porsche’s most important markets, and the project partner team Porsche Penske is an American team that would have a large contributing factor to this decision.

This will be a major loss for WEC as Porsche is now the second team to leave the grid in less than a year after Lamborghini’s withdrawal.

The future of motor sport is changing, with the energy being shifted to hybrid and electric powertrains from screaming V8 engines a further shift to promote these powertrains in everyday life as well.