Porsche adds ex-BMW technical director to IMSA GTP attack

Last year, Fry was working on its German rival BMW’s GTP challenger – the M Hybrid V8 – which inherited its sole race win from Porsche at Watkins Glen, following a post-race technical inspection that disqualified the 963 that won on the road.

Fry previously worked on BMW’s IMSA GT campaigns, alongside a part-time IndyCar engineering role with RLL, having moved to the team from Chip Ganassi Racing at the end of 2017.

Explaining the bolstered engineering operation for 2024, PPM’s managing director Jonathan Diuguid said that a review of its first year in the electrical hybrid GTP era showed the need for more depth.

“A lot of the teams were just trying to get the cars on track last year and after a season of racing we have visibility of what staffing levels we need,” he said. “We’ve added engineering personnel in all of our programs, WEC and IMSA.

“As part of that change, we have one or two [more] performance engineers and we’ve added some engineering management to the team. Brandon Fry is joining our team as lead race engineer on our IMSA programe, so he’ll be supporting our two race engineers that ran the cars last season.

“He adds some capacity to cover all the bases, just helping manage the people in the background, and performance engineers, to make sure we get the maximum out of the car.”

Photo by: Michael L. Levitt / Motorsport Images

#7 Team Penske Porsche 963: Matt Campbell, Felipe Nasr, Josef Newgarden

Diuguid believes that year two of competition with the LMDh cars will be more stable, as teams have got to grips with their hybrid-powered machines.

“Calmer is definitely the way I would describe it,” he added. “Obviously everyone has a season under their belts with hybrid powertrains, the batteries and protocols – we did do a safety review with the team just last Friday with the team, so people aren’t too relaxed.

“But I think in general the preparation level, and I expect that from our competitors, will be a lot higher. People are going to start focusing on the racing, rather than the stuff in the background.”