In This Article:
General Motors' (GM) Cadillac and Porsche (DRPRY) duked it out at the Daytona Rolex 24 race — with Porsche taking the win by a few seconds.
Yahoo Finance Autos Reporter Pras Subramanian visited the prestigious race, sitting down with Porsche VP of Motorsport Thomas Laudenbach to get the inside scoop on Porsche's plans for the latest hybrid and EV models.
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Editor's note: This article was written by Eyek Ntekim
Video Transcript
JOSH LIPTON: Pras, I was going to ask you, just back from a trip to Daytona, right? And GMs, Cadillac was among the brands racing, right?
PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: Yeah, I mean, so this is the crown jewel of American sports car racing, is the Daytona Rolex 24 Endurance Race. And basically, Porsche and Cadillac, GM's Cadillac, were battling out for 24 hours. And it came down to the last lap, and Porsche sort of just won by a few seconds, actually, after 24 hours. So that's sort of a big deal for them, getting the overall win in that category. It's a big, prestigious thing to have. Porsche, this is the second year of a new class of hybrid racing, and Porsche, they had an OK year, but not the best. And this is more along the lines of where they expect to be.
And I spoke to the head of motorsport, Thomas Lautenbach, about how important this is for them not just to win on the track but also on the roadmap, because a lot of that stuff translates to the road cars.
THOMAS LAUTENBACH: I would say it was definitely the next step in sports car racing. I mean, maybe as a general comment for us, it's extremely important that what we do at the track, what we do on a circuit here, that it has relevance to what we do with our road cars. And therefore, the hybrids, that was important, electrification in itself, take it step by step.
And I think it's fair to say we were the ones to commit quite early to the new series. And from what happened after that, I think it gave it a push. I mean, I think it's fair to say that-- I mean, we got a huge brand name, it's a well-known name in motorsport. And Porsche entering that series, for sure, attracted also other brands.
PRAS SUBRAMANIAN: So Thomas is actually an engineer, too, at heart. And he actually designed one of the hybrid supercars that they did a few years back, called the 919-- 918 Spider. But also, you mentioned brands, you have BMW, Cadillac, as I mentioned, Porsche, and Acura in the US. And the sister series, same cars-- type of cars in Europe with Ferrari, Toyota, Lamborghini, Stellantis's Peugeot, and also Renault's Alpine brand is all racing. And they all race together at Le Mans in France, too. So a lot going on there.