Tandy: “The Spectacle Still Has To Be What Is Happening On the Track”

Nick Tandy’s place as one of modern endurance racing’s all-time greats is fairly secure. Throughout his career, he’s won so many of the greatest 24-hour races around the world – Nürburgring, Spa-Francorchamps, and most famously of all, Le Mans in 2015.

He made his mark driving Porsches – various racing versions of the 911 GT car, and of course, a brief but memorable time aboard the legendary 919 Hybrid LMP1. This year, Tandy was selected to drive one of the new Porsche 963 LMDh prototypes prepared by Penske Motorsport – but they didn’t have the debut race they’d hoped for. The #6 Porsche of Tandy, Dane Cameron, and Mathieu Jaminet in particular showed the pace to win at stages but were eliminated after a spectacular gearbox failure.

In his assessment of where the Porsche-Penske alliance stands heading into this second round of the IMSA WeatherTech Sportscar Championship, he was also very grounded.

“I think we’ve come out of Daytona – we’ve learned a lot. And obviously, we’re going to improve. But the thing is, we’re in a race against other cars and manufacturers,” Tandy remarked. “And they’re going to improve and learn as much stuff as we are as well.”

“We’re here to race and be competitive. Of course, in endurance or any race, you need to make the finish to finish first. But we can see the progress that the other teams and manufacturers are making as well.”

Tandy would be justified in feeling upbeat about his chances of winning at Sebring – he won the all-pro GTLM class three years in a row, driving the Porsche 911 RSR. But he won’t write any cheques that he can’t cash – the nature of this race and this circuit won’t allow anyone, even a three-time Sebring winner, to get overconfident.

“We’re not really sure what’s going to happen this weekend,” Tandy said. “Sebring is a very particular type of race circuit – I think you’ll see that in WEC as well – there’ll be cars that work here particularly well, and some that don’t. I’m not sure we can look at this as a form book of what’s going to happen, or even a guide of how progress has been since Daytona.”

“It’s a different type of track. There is obviously very different regulations on how we can use the tyres, which is very important at the moment in this class from a camber and pressure point of view. This is the same for all the cars, but then we need to see how each car responds to the different kind of rules and regulations that we have at a sprint-type circuit like Sebring, as opposed to a superspeedway like Daytona.”

“I don’t think anybody is on top of it,” Tandy commented of the state of play with the LMDh manufacturers in terms of reliability – which will be tested to its upper limits at Sebring.

“The issues we had at Daytona were completely new to us. And I’m sure there will be more and more technical issues that come across cars in the class in GTP that haven’t been seen before. This is just the nature of the beast.”

Even the greatest cars that the manufacturer has developed – the 919 Hybrid, the 962, the 917 – each needed refinement and time in order to become the great vehicles that they would be remembered as

“It’s not historically surprising that when there’s new parts, new technologies, new partners, et cetera – it takes time to iron bugs out […] and get on top of things. We will learn stuff from Daytona, but it doesn’t mean that new stuff’s not going to happen, and come up. So it’s still a bit unknown.”

“But this is part of the excitement of these long endurance races, I guess. You never know what’s gonna happen!”

Tandy’s return to Sebring as a Porsche driver (he spent the last two seasons with Corvette Racing) also coincides with the Porsche 963’s debut in the FIA World Endurance Championship, held on Friday – before the 12 Hours of Sebring. Tandy will not race in the WEC full-time, but he is part of a “unified” Porsche Penske Motorsports outfit that is spearheading the 963’s debut in WEC.

With the arrival of Porsche, Cadillac, Ferrari, and the first full-season campaign from Peugeot, the 1000 Miles is considered the first “proper” race of the new Le Mans Hypercar era. Some will lament that Hypercar has cost caps, power limits, and Balance of Performance – none of which were a part of LMP1 Hybrid’s golden years, for better or worse.

In this regard, Tandy is far more open-minded. “That’s part of sport, isn’t it? And the Balance of Performance is a part of the way the sport is. And it has to be,” Tandy said.

“The spectacle still has to be what is happening on the track, absolutely, at the end of the day, and this is a good thing.”

“I mean, you look at the cars here this weekend. You’ve got full grids of GT in both series, and you’ve got massive grids of these great, brand-new prototypes in both series. It’s putting on a show that hasn’t been seen for years and years and years.”

“I think it’s how it’s perceived, from people that don’t really understand how we need sport to function, for it to be a sport.”

It would be to any driver’s advantage if they could win every race, including Tandy and his Porsche teammates.

But he’s is as much a fan of sports car racing as he is an active competitor, and he stands behind these means of ‘balancing the books’ in order to preserve a long-term and sustainable future for the top levels of international endurance racing.

“They don’t understand how necessary it is to have cars on the grid. Because if there wasn’t, there’d be no […] cars racing – or there’d be two, the quickest ones, and the rest – everyone else would go home! Or, you know, eventually, the board would say, ‘you’ve spent enough cash’ – you know how it happens. It’s just evolution.”

Images © Porsche