Ayhancan Güven Interview: the reigning DTM Champion on preparations for his Le Mans debut

Credit: Ayhancan Güven

Everybody has seen Ayhancan Güven's final lap send on Marco Wittmann at Hockenheim, when he won his maiden DTM Drivers' Championship. He sat down with DIVEBOMB to reflect on the preparations for his 24 Hours of Le Mans debut in the LMGT3 class, and the differences between DTM sprint racing and WEC endurance racing.

Güven started his career in various Porsche Championships, where he won the Porsche Carrera Cup France back-to-back in 2018 and 2019, and both the Porsche GT3 Cup Challenge Benelux and FIA GT Nations Cup in 2018. While racing in these series, he clocked his first laps around the Circuit de la Sarthe, where the fabled 24 Hour race takes place.

Around a 13.626km race track, every bit of experience is important, especially on a street circuit where the track can be characterised by unsighted features such as bumps and gradients in the road: "For sure it's a bit different, but at the end, I remember some curbs, some corners, which helps. It's actually helped quite a lot, but it's been such a long time, it was 2017 and 2020, so it's now more than six years. But it for sure helped to know the curbs and stuff."

The simulator is now common practice amongst drivers preparing for race weekends, especially for the younger ones, such as Güven who is 28 years old. The combination of previous experience on the track, and simulator time has left Güven optimistic for the 24 Hours of Le Mans, despite it being his debut, especially after the test session on Monday. "It was nice to do some laps, see the traffic, the multi class, different classes: LMP2, hypercar. So generally it was really positive. 
Also, my teammates did a good improvement during the day, so it was a positive test day."

The "good improvements" Güven referred to from his teammates is because neither of them (James Cottingham and Timur Boguslavskiy) had driven the Porsche 911 GT3 R before this WEC season, so he has used his wide scope of Porsche experience to help get them up to pace.

Regardless of his teammate's lack of experience in the Porsche, they have picked up strong results regardless in the opening two rounds of the seasons. At the 6 hours of Imola, the No.91 DK Engineering Manthey Porsche finished in fourth, one place off the podium. The car finished in seventh at Spa.

Although they are yet to pick up a trophy, Güven is satisfied with the results, as consistent points are often the most important in endurance racing. "We are already seventh in the championship, but most importantly, we had two races where we score points and the gaps are still quite small. We are P7, but only 12 points behind the leader, and the winner of Le Mans gets 50 points.

"It was important [to pick up the previous two point finishes] because we had quite a new lineup. 
You know, my teammates, for both of them, this is their first time driving the Porsche. So I was expecting that we will get better and better during the season, which coming to Le Mans, they are in a better shape.

"This race has a lot of points, and I want to finish the season in a good position;
the WEC season is quite important for me. This race is also the key point, because there's a lot of points. You know, if we can do a top three result, we will always score a big amount of points."

Credit: Manthey

Although the points are important for the championship, Güven did admit that if he were chasing the leader on the final lap, he would still take the risk of a daring overtake if it meant securing a Le Mans victory.

Of course, the most famous moment from his career was his phenomenal pass on the grass to win the DTM Championship in 2025. The style of racing in DTM is much different, being a race which only lasts one hour, this means that Güven has had to adapt his aggressive style to race in the WEC: "For me, it's actually quite a different feeling because I'm from a sprint background and I did a lot of sprint racing, and yeah, when I'm endurance racing, I'm being really careful.

"I try to take care of the car and always try to play the long game. It's something I'm not used to, but also sometimes I feel I'm too safe in the endurance racing. I think it's the way to go: to see the final hours and then you want to push. I mean WEC races are actually 6 hours, so they're not so long, and I always do the last part, but Le Mans will be different, that I will drive also early stages of the race and stuff.

"I think it's important to look after the car. I think I have some switches in my mind, when it's last hours and important, I will take more risk, but in the beginning of the races we will probably drive a lower risk mode for the car, but also for reliability. Also the Le Mans is the kind of race where, if there's no safety cars, the gaps will stay; last year there was only one safety car.

"You cannot lose so much time, so you need to be already fast from the beginning. I think this balance, I need to improve a bit; you know, not too safe, maybe in the beginning, but also not so much risk. I think this is what makes endurance racing special."

Despite the differences in the race format, Güven said the preparations are similar, with only a few differences: "Preparation wise, it's more or less similar. While in the sprint championships, I was more focused on qualifying, you know, really looking for this one lap performance from the tyres, from the car, from the setup. While here [at Le Mans], I'm not at all thinking about qualifying.

"Also, I'm trying to make my teammates faster, so while in sprint racing, I just care about myself, and here I'm looking out for my teammates. I think these are the biggest difference that you don't focus for one lap and qualifying."

Güven's No.91 Porsche finished fourth in the first qualifying session yesterday (Wednesday), which has given the car the opportunity to fight in the LMGT3 Hyperpole, which is at 20:00 local time (19:00 BST) this evening.

The race will start at 16:00 local time on Saturday; Güven thinks his chances of getting his maiden WEC trophy this weekend are positive, providing the Manthey team and drivers execute a well-delivered race: "I think we have the package for it: the drivers, the teams. I think everything is ready, we just need to perform and need to have a luck on our side."