How And Where To Watch Porsche In This Weekend’s Tudor United Sports Car Challenge At Monterey

It was just a year ago (May 2013) that CORE autosport was the newest Porsche team on the grid at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca. The South Carolina-based team came to the Porsche family as two-time American Le Mans Series (ALMS) Prototype Challenge (PC) champions but with no GT experience.

Flash forward to September 2013 at the Circuit of the Americas and that same team, CORE autosport, was named the preparation partner to Porsche Cars North America (PCNA) and Porsche Motorsport North America (PMNA) for the German marque’s first North American “works” program in recent memory. Driving the Porsche 911 RSR, the two-car factory effort, now under the banner “Porsche North America”, opened the 2014 TUDOR United SportsCar Championship with back-to-back victories in Rolex 24 At Daytona and Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring. In less than a year’s time, CORE went from a “newbie” in GT racing to a full-factory effort and winners of two of the most prestigious sports car races in the world.

This coming weekend during the Continental Tire Monterey Grand Prix Powered by Mazda they’ll be back at it. The No. 911 will be piloted by Porsche factory drivers Nick Tandy and Richard Lietz, while Patrick Long and Michael Christensen will share driving duties in the No. 912. The 3rd 911 RSR, the Team Falken Tire entry, is driven by the usual crew of Wolf Henzler and Bryan Sellers.

What You’ll See

This weekend’s main event is actually broken into two separate races in order to accommodate the full field (Laguna Seca is too small a track to allow for all 51 entrants to race at the same time, hence the need for two separate races). The first is the 2-hour GT Daytona Class (featuring the Porsche 911 GT America) that runs on Sunday May, 4 at 1:15 p.m. ET/ 10:15 a.m. PT. The second race is the GT Le Mans Class (featuring the Porsche 911 RSR) and runs later that same day at 5:45 p.m. ET/ 2:45 p.m. PT.

In addition to the main event is the Porsche GT3 Cup Challenge USA by Yokohama. Held on the same day, in two 45 minute races. The first is the Platinum Class (Model Year 2014 Porsche 911 GT3 Cup cars) at 12:00 p.m. ET/ 9:00 a.m. PT and the 2nd race is the Gold Class (Model Year 2011-2012 Porsche 911 GT3 Cup cars) at 8:15 p.m. ET/ 5:15 p.m. PT.