As announced yesterday, Pascal Wehrlein will drive the #4 Porsche 963 alongside Nick Tandy and Felipe Nasr at Le Mans.
Phil Oakley
This is obviously a 'promotion' for the German — he says it's a 'dream come true' and he is 'extremely grateful' for the opportunity.
On Porsche's side, they chose him because 'Pascal Wehrlein has fully convinced us with his performance in testing and his participation in the 24 Hours of Daytona. As the reigning Formula E World Champion, he has earned his Le Mans debut at the wheel of a Porsche 963.'
Wehrlein's rivals for this were Nico Müller — who will act as Porsche Penske Motorsport's reserve driver for Le Mans — and António Félix da Costa, who will race an as-yet unspecified LMP2.
Comparing Müller and Wehrlein
It's quite tricky to directly compare these three drivers. They've never driven the same car in the same (endurance/sportscar) race — in fact, they've never even driven in the same class in the same race.
But what we can do is compare Wehrlein and Müller's performances at Daytona and Sebring, where they both raced customer Porsches.
Wehrlein at Daytona
Wehrlein made his endurance and sportscar debut at Daytona this year, driving the #85 JDC Miller customer Porsche alongside Gianmaria Bruni, Tijmen van der Helm, and Bryce Aron.
He's an experienced driver with considerable knowledge and ability — his two years in F1, racing for Manor and Sauber attest to that. And he's won the Formula E world championship, which can be tricky to win due to the closeness of the competition.
So, he's no slouch. That said, he's an endurance racing rookie and will have one race under his belt before Le Mans, unless he's parachuted into a customer Porsche in either WEC or IMSA before then to gain extra experience.
But, as you'd expect from a platinum-rated driver, he was decently on the pace. in the window along with the other drivers in the JDC Miller car and from Porsche's other customer, Proton.
Lap times don't tell the whole story, though — it's important to look at percentage difference. As you can see from the graph, Matt Campbell was, on average with this metric, the fastest Porsche driver. Wehrlein was 1.11% off him on average, or 0.55% off Bruni, the fastest driver among the eight drivers in the JDC Miller or Proton cars.
In terms of time in the car, Wehrlein did 204 laps over the race — just over 26% of the total distance covered by the JDC Miller car, 777 laps. Bruni did the most, 234 laps, while Aron 142 and van der Helm 196. This equates to eight stints, with 34 laps done under caution for Wehrlein - 16.6% of his total.
Phil Oakley
Müller at Sebring
Müller took the seat for Sebring, alongside full-time drivers Bruni and van der Helm.
Müller comes with more sportscar experience than Wehrlein. He raced for Peugeot in the FIA World Endurance Championship for two years, and before that raced in the LMP2 category in 2022.
Previous to that he did nine years in DTM, finishing second in the championship twice, in 2019 and 2020. For context Wehrlein raced in DTM as well, winning the championship on his third attempt in 2015.
So, Müller is also no slouch, and has more quite a lot sportscar experience than Wehrlein. That said, Müller also only raced the 963 once, this year at Sebring, amid his full season focus on Formula E (the same as Wehrlein).
So, how did he do at the old airfield? Well, in general, very respectively. He beat Bruni in our average metric to be the fastest of the Porsche customer team drivers, nine hundredths faster than the sportscar veteran. He also beat Neel Jani, Le Mans winner and world endurance champion in 2016.
Percentage wise, he was 0.54% on average slower than Nick Tandy, who won the race. He was 0.09% faster than Bruni, and 0.23% faster than van der Helm — who Wehrlein was slightly slower than at Daytona.
Lap count wise, Müller did 109 laps out of the 352 completed by JDC Miller. That's 30.9% of the race. Bruni did 134 laps, while van der Helm did 108. Müller did 11 laps under yellow - just over 10% of his total.
Comparing Müller and Da Costa
Unfortunately we cannot directly compare Wehrlein with Müller and António Félix Da Costa because Wehrlein was an endurance racing debutant at Daytona.
But we can compare Müller and Da Costa, as they both raced an Oreca LMP2 at Le Mans in 2022, before Müller switched to racing the Peugeot 9X8 at the team's debut the following race, at Monza.
Da Costa won the race in LMP2, finishing fifth overall driving the #38 JOTA Sport Oreca. Müller was in the #10 Vector Sport Oreca, finishing 22nd in class, 27th overall.
But we're not bothered about lap times. What we are bothered about is performance.
Using the same metric – top 20% lap times from each driver, averaged out to a single value — we can see that Nyck de Vries was the quickest LMP2 driver that year.
Da Costa was 0.13% off de Vries on average, or 0.277. Müller was slightly slower, 0.34% off de Vries (0.21% off da Costa), or 0.728 (0.451 off da Costa).
And in terms of lap counts, they were all very similar: De Vries did 135, Da Costa on 130, and Müller on 131.
Phil Oakley
Conclusions
When you look at the above, Da Costa is, in purely numerical terms, faster. If we play driver maths based on the data above and nothing else, Da Costa was faster than Müller at Le Mans in 2022, while Müller was faster than Wehrlein compared across races in 2025.
Obviously this is meaningless. As all three have driven Porsche machinery in the past, either in Formula E or in sportscars, the German manufacturer will have a lot more data to play with. One note: we didn't look at Da Costa's year at JOTA in a customer 963, because the car has been upgraded and amended since, and WEC BoP is very different from IMSA's, making basic comparison pointless.
My basic inclination here is Porsche believe Wehrlein has a higher ceiling potential than Müller and Da Costa. Yes the German was slower compared to other Porsche drivers at Daytona when you compare his performance against Müller's at Sebring. But Porsche say he 'convinced' them in his performance at Daytona.. so that's that.
Tim Fullbrook
The other thing in play is internal politics. Rumours in the Formula E paddock say Da Costa will be departing the Porsche stable at the end of the current season, with Müller partnering Wehrlein there next year. If Da Costa is to depart Porsche's sportscar programme too, it would explain why he's 'only' in LMP2 this year for Le Mans.
Finally, a note on Sebastian Vettel. The German tested with Porsche last year and was seemingly in play for a race seat at Le Mans in 2024. But it never happened. Porsche haven't completely ruled out the chances of it happening in the future, but it's probably better not to get hopes up too high, lest it doesn't happen. Which it probably won't.
So, tl;dr: Wehrlein did well at Daytona in his first ever sportscar race, and almost certainly has room to improve, which is probably why he was chosen to race for the factory team at Le Mans over Da Costa or Müller.
Feature image: DPPI/WEC
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