WEC News: Inside Porsche Penske Motorsport Mannheim facility

Porsche Penske Motorsport serves as Porsche’s global operations team in the top classes of the two endurance series FIA WEC and IMSA.

While the factory team prepares the two Porsche 963 race cars for the North American IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship at the established base in Mooresville in the US state of North Carolina, work on the WEC project is done at the new team headquarters in Mannheim, Germany.

Porsche and Team Penske have gone to great lengths to transform a former Porsche Center into a state-of-the-art, high-tech facility for its world championship campaigns.

The property near the Autobahn 656 in the Friedrichsfeld district of Mannheim has belonged to Penske Automotive since 2008. Porsche Motorsport’s American partner ran the Porsche Center on the almost one-hectare site until 2014. The facility then waited for a new purpose.

This began in December 2020. After the Porsche AG board approved the development of the new Porsche 963 Le Mans prototype and renewed its collaboration with the Penske team in May 2021, work began on the building complex on Lembacher Straße in Mannheim. The facility offers around 4,500 square meters of usable space.

“Our state-of the-art facilities have to deliver everything we need to operate across two continents – between Mannheim, Weissach and Mooresville – and globally as a race team,” explains Jonathan Diuguid, Managing Director of Porsche Penske Motorsport. “The building, originally designed and built by Porsche and then acquired by Penske as a Porsche dealership, has been fully remodeled and modernized to support the needs of racing and servicing our hybrid-powered Porsche 963 race cars around the world.”

The heritage becomes obvious at the entrance, with several exhibits from the Porsche Museum in the foyer – including the legendary RS Spyder, with which Porsche and Team Penske scooped the LMP2 title pool in the American Le Mans Series between 2006 and 2008. After three years of construction and an investment of several million euros, the Mannheim location now offers ideal working conditions for the WEC team, with spacious office space, state-of-the-art conference rooms, digital networking and spotless workshops.

Ideal working conditions

Four work areas are used for the construction and maintenance as well as suspension and weight adjustment of the Porsche 963. There are also departments for pre-assembly, racing equipment, carbon composite processing, high-voltage systems, spare parts as well as storage and logistics. The highlight: Porsche Penske Motorsport has built a replica of the Le Mans pit lane. Every day, the mechanics practice changing tires and refueling on a special test and training vehicle. In the nearby gym, the crew can work on improving their strength, coordination and fitness.