The RS Spyder and 917/30, both Porsche and Penske championship winners, are being celebrated during the six-hour endurance race weekend that kicks off July 30th.
Powerhouse IMSA team Porsche Penske Motorsport’s existence only dates back to 2023, but the partnership between Porsche and Team Penske is much older. Now, after racing with a series of throwback looks celebrating just Porsche’s history, the PPM team is heading to Road America for this weekend’s Motul Sports Car Endurance Grand Prix Featuring IMSA with two liveries on its Porsche 963s that celebrate a pair of previous championship-winning partnerships between the two groups who are behind the three-time-consecutive and currently reigning 24 Hours of Daytona winners.
The No. 6 car, the blue and yellow one finished with chrome down the side, is adorned in a livery that should look familiar to fans of Can-Am racing. The scheme, originally a Sunoco design, was run by Team Penske on a Porsche 917/30 back in 1973. It was also used on that car for a ridiculous 221-mile-per-hour speed demonstration at Talladega in 1975. Penske used a similar livery on a Lola that won the 24 Hours of Daytona in 1969 as well as on Mark Donohue’s 1972 Indianapolis 500 winner, but the red accents along the side and chrome on the bottom are direct tributes to the specific design run on the Porsche Can-Am racer.
View Price on AmazonPPM’s other retro design, on the No. 7 car, is an homage to the Porsche RS Spyders that Penske ran in the LMP2 class from 2005 to 2008. That Penske program won class championships in each of its three full-time seasons, but the crowning achievement was an overall win from a secondary class at the 2008 12 Hours of Sebring. This livery was originally a DHL design, but — like the Sunoco-inspired scheme on the No. 6 — it no longer includes the original sponsor.
Both liveries can be seen in the weekend’s six-hour race at Road America, a new endurance event added to the IMSA calendar this year. The race in Wisconsin has long been traditional for IMSA and its American Le Mans Series predecessor, but the switch to an endurance format makes it part of the championship-within-a-championship Endurance Cup that encompasses this race, Watkins Glen, Sebring, Daytona, and Petit Le Mans.
Source: roadandtrack.com
