Team Penske President Jonathan Diuguid says that Porsche Penske Motorsport (PPM) will not shy away from continuing to use team orders moving forward despite the tense drama that unfolded at the end of the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring.
PPM dominated with a 1-2 result in last month’s once-around-the-clock crown jewel of the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship. However, the tense post-race press conference featured harsh words from Kevin Estre, who called out teammate and race winner Felipe Nasr for not respecting team orders when the former was out front with roughly an hour to go.
During a Porsche media call on Thursday morning with select media, Diuguid shared that the drama from Sebring will not prevent the team from continuing to issue team orders if a scenario arises.
“Yeah, absolutely,” Diuguid said. “I think every single manufacturer in the Sebring 12-hour has employed team orders. You know, Cadillac swapped positions between the #10 and #31 at the end of the race.
“(The) BMWs switched positions on track and in pit lane. Acura switched positions on track and pit, so it’s part of the sport and it’s part of being successful with the pit lane structures that we race in and everything like that. So, absolutely, because in the end our goal is to make sure our Porsche ends up first and we’re going to do whatever it takes to do that.”
Julien Andlauer, the full-time co-driver with Nasr on the #7 Porsche 963, was part of an IMSA media call on Wednesday and confirmed rumors there was a meeting following the fallout of Sebring.
“Yeah, and that’s the thing, we all pretty much talked about it and we exposed our point of view and we just came down to the basics, which are respect of each other of everything that what is internal should remain internal,” Andlauer said.
“Some people did mistakes, I’m not gonna talk about driver’s management or this or that, but then we just all talked about it so it doesn’t happen again.”
Jonathan Diuguid – Indianapolis 500 Practice
Photo by: Penske Entertainment
Diuguid, who also oversees strategy on the #6 Porsche driven full-time by Estre and Laurens Vanthoor was asked by Motorsport.com if it was a driver’s only meeting, or if it was a collective meeting with himself and other key members of Porsche’s leadership that helped diffuse the situation as they prepare next week for the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach.
“The details of how we went through our analysis aren’t terribly important,” Diuguid said. “The one thing I will say is we looked at all levels of the team from you know how the drivers interacted to how Travis (Law, Team Penske’s Competition Director and strategist on the #7 entry) and I interacted, to how the management staff interacted with managing the situation. We talked about things that we thought we did well and we talked about things that we didn’t think we did so well.
“Ultimately, we did get all the drivers together and openly talked about the missteps or mistakes or however you want to analyze it and set the expectation going forward. Everybody left that meeting with a common understanding and also a common goal. There’s no existing hard feelings or anything like that, but it’s something (team orders) that has been part of sports car racing and racing in general and it’s something that’s not going to go away.
“And I hope to be in that position in Long Beach again where we’re talking about which one of the PPM cars is going to finish first.”
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