Mixed Emotions

In racing, there are team wins and there are victories. As Porsche works driver Laurens Vanthoor shared following the Rolex 24, there's a big difference.

Laurens Vanthoor is a bona fide Porsche man.

A driver for the German carmaker's motorsport division since 2017, his highlights include class wins at Le Mans (2018) and Sebring (2021, 2023) as well as a pair IMSA full-season class championships (GTLM 2019, GTD 2021).

When Porsche returned to top-level prototype racing in 2023 partnering with Team Penske, Vanthoor got a full-time ride in one of Porsche Penske Motorsport's two Porsche 963 LMDh hypercar FIA World Endurance Championship entries. He also got the call as an endurance race co-driver in Porsche Penske's No. 6 IMSA GTP ride for the 10-hour Petit Le Mans season finale.

At Daytona last month, Vanthoor was back behind the wheel of Penske's No. 6 GTP entry, serving as one of the team's four drivers—and one of two endurance race co-drivers—in the Rolex 24 IMSA season opener.

So when Porsche Penske captured the 24-hour spectacle—Porsche's first Daytona overall win since 2010 and Penske's first since 1969—Vanthoor was, like his Porsche stablemates, happy.

But he was hardly satisfied.

No surprise there.

While Vanthoor is part of Porsche Penske Motorsport, he's first and foremost a world-class racing driver. And like any elite-level racer, he prioritizes one thing over all else: Winning.

Porsche may have captured the Rolex 24, but the victory-lane accolades and champagne swigs went to Felipe Nasr, Matt Campbell, Dane Cameron and Josef Newgarden, drivers of Penske's No. 7 entry.

Vanthoor and co-drivers Kévin Estre, Nick Tandy, and Mathieu Jaminet finished fourth.

"It's a very delicate thing," Vanthoor shared on a post-Rolex episode of the stellar Over The Limit podcast he hosts with brother and fellow driver Dries. "Everybody [says], 'Congratulations, Porsche won.'...Yeah."

Porsche Penske’s winning ride in the 2024 Rolex 24. (Photo/S. Broderick)

Vanthoor emphasized that he is "genuinely happy" for the winning drivers. Each earning his first taste of overall Rolex 24 victory, and all but Newgarden are fellow Porsche factory drivers.

Vanthoor saluted Cameron in particular, who had never finished in the top three in class, let alone overall, in any of his previous 14 Rolex 24 starts.

“It's really good,” he said. “It's good for everyone.”

But not great. Not for everyone, at least.

"We're athletes. We do this because we want to win," Vanthoor said. "If you see that the other [team] car was able to win....The opportunity was there, but they did a better job and you didn't capitalize on that opportunity, it sucks."

The Porsche Penske team clearly had the winning formula at Daytona. But Vanthoor's No. 6 963 couldn't match the No. 7's pace consistently. A series of penalties and a late-race off-track excursion by Estre didn't help.

Vanthoor isn't sure why he and his co-drivers could not stay with the eventual winner. It may have been slight variations in car set-ups, or maybe they were simply out-driven. Whatever created the ultimately insurmountable gap, it proved especially painful knowing it meant the difference between victory and also-ran.

"You want to be the guy who wins and [that] everybody's celebrating," Vanthoor said. "And then the four of us [car No. 6 drivers] are sitting there like...yeah."

Vanthoor didn't have much time to lament what might have been in Florida. He headed right back to Europe to test his WEC Porsche 963 in preparation for the March 2 season kick-off in Qatar.

Before the WEC season gets underway, he'll head down to Australia to run the Bathurst 12 Hour in—what else?—a Porsche, for Germany's Manthey Racing.

At each stop, Vanthoor's focus will be on ensuring not just that Porsche, but his Porsche, reigns supreme.

"Not everybody understands that," Vanthoor said "I mean, for sure you want to win yourself. If not, then you're doing something wrong."

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References

Over The Limit podcast—https://laurensvanthoor.be/pages/podcast

Penske’s Rolex 24 penalties and Estre’s off—https://sportscar365.com/imsa/iwsc/nasr-beats-blomqvist-to-historic-rolex-24-win-for-porsche/

Bathurst plans—https://www.manthey-racing.de/en/manthey-ema-to-field-two-porsche-911-gt3-r-in-the-bathurst-12-hour

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