ROLEX 24 AT DAYTONA

January 28, 2024

Urs Kuratle

Media Conference

THE MODERATOR: We will start off our post-race interviews with some words from the winning overall manufacturer in GTP, Urs Kuratle, who's the director factory racing LMDH for Porsche. So, Boris, congratulations, a huge win for Porsche. This is the first overall win at the Rolex 24 for Porsche since 2010, 23rd overall Rolex 24 win for Porsche, and 72nd class win, most all-time among manufacturers here at Daytona. Congratulations. What does it mean to the manufacturer?

URS KURATLE: Thank you. As I say all those numbers, obviously it's huge for us. It is huge. Especially if you think where we're coming from, from last year here, that was not our best performance I have to say, and there was a lot of obviously lessons learned we had throughout the year.

Obviously it pays out, so there was a lot of work from all our part. It was not only the IMSA team we have out of Mooresville, but also the team in Mannheim. Obviously, people in Weisach, the development team, and also our chassis partner Multimatic.

Again, we had a lot lessons to learn from last year, but again, it pays out now. We are extremely happy.

Q. It seemed that the Porsches were extremely well-suited in the early morning hours in the cooler conditions. Were you at all worried in the closing stages of the race that it could have gone the other way?

URS KURATLE: It easily could have gone the other way. It was really, really tight. I've been asked a couple times how much was still in the pocket. There was nothing in the pocket anymore as most of the people could see.

Yeah, in the early morning when it was cold and in the dark that's a strength of the car. And actually saw that last year in Sebring, for example, always when it's dark we are performing very good, so that paid off here, as well.

But come daytime, it was tight.

Q. Were you worried about the 7 car potentially having the power train parameter issue that the 6 car encountered?

URS KURATLE: Actually not really because we had this morning that was like quite early in the race and then we reacted to it, it was the first one, and then we had the second one which was the second penalty, which was technically with another situation, another problem.

We reacted straightaway, so obviously we loaded all those files and all those corrections into the 7 car but also into the customer cars.

Q. So there was no concern; it was a software related situation?

URS KURATLE: Yeah, they were power made basically when the car was being charged, especially toward the Bus Stop Chicane. We had peaks and they were just too much for the system, put it this way, and as I said, there were corrections done, and that was it.

Q. What does it mean to get all four cars to the finish in relatively trouble-free fashion?

URS KURATLE: That's for us big, especially because reliability was one of our biggest concerns last year, and once again, we had a lot of work, we did a lot of work for this, and having all four cars, that's huge.

Also congratulations to the customers because they really did very well. JDC had some bad luck early in the race with the unfortunate yellow, and proto did a great job.

For us, it's huge. I don't think I realized completely what it means yet.

Q. The last couple of hours of the race, pit work seemed to be a key part in giving you the advantage going into the final sprint.

URS KURATLE: Exactly. As you can imagine, there was a lot of calculations, especially to the fuel, the advantage being after the Cadillac in the pit lane so we could react. Whenever the Cadillac left the garage we could leave the garage and that brought us ahead of the Cadillac at the end.

It was a tremendous job done by the people here at the track responsible for Weissach, in the operations, too. These people were flat-out calculating, and yeah, making that happen.

Q. Was there any confusion at the end with the checkered flag coming out maybe a bit earlier than we expected? That's the way it seemed in here. Was it the same way on the pit wall?

URS KURATLE: Yeah, there was some calls which may have been confusing, but at the end of the day, we stopped after 24 hours, and there was one more lap than there was originally told on the radio, but to be very honest to you, I had my radio off at that time, so I can't talk you through that sequence of calls.

Q. We saw Kevin have a problem where he went off on a fresh set of tires straight out of the pits. Do you think it helps in the last. (Zoom stream frozen.)

URS KURATLE: That sure is the biggest challenge of the project.

Q. With so much history over the years between Porsche and Penske, and then maybe last year people expected you to come out and dominate, I don't want to say it was disappointing, but was there pressure to get the season off to a good start this year?

URS KURATLE: The pressure was quite big. Last year we had -- if you go to a race with Porsche, with brands like Porsche and Penske together, then you have to win. You're not going to become second. That makes a lot of pressure. Then if you have the history from Porsche and the Le Mans with the nine victories we had there, there will be this year a big and huge pressure but it's also an honor to work for those companies and be representative of those companies.

Q. Urs, we spoke about this event prior --

URS KURATLE: I know what's coming now.

Q. You know what's coming. Asked about getting ready for last year's race, the debut, you're talking about not being here if you had enough diapers to present yourself from pooping yourself on pre grid. Talk about the adventure in year two.

URS KURATLE: Before I came I went to the toilet. No, actually when we spoke about it, that was the situation I was hoping for, that we really have a thrilling race and a thrilling final of the race, and I guess that race was really good not only from the Porsche perspective, it was a really cool race for everybody to watch, and that was exactly the situation we were looking for.

But it was nerve-racking probably is the right term. We should have more often those calls.