Richard Lietz on "good feeling" with latest evolution of Porsche 911 GT3 R during WEC prologue

Credit: Porsche Motorsport

The World Endurance Championship (WEC) should be three weeks in right now, but since the Qatar 1812km was cancelled, this week has been the first chapter of the 2026 WEC season. The prologue took place on Tuesday and Manthey's Porsche driver, Richard Lietz, was positive for the season ahead.

Lietz will once again be driving in the No.92 Porsche, racing to defend the championship he claimed last year with Riccardo Pera and Ryan Hardwick. Pera will team up with Lietz this year, but Yasser Shahin will replace Hardwick.

The other change to the No.92 is that The Bend will replace 1st Phorm's responsibilities running the operations at the track alongside Manthey. On the other side of the garage, DK Engineering have switched from McLaren to Porsche to manage the No.91.

After the prologue, Lietz said: "[It was a] very positive prologue for us, we really got a good feeling for the new car."

The new car Lietz is referring to is the evolved version of the Porsche 911 GT3 R - which has won both championships since the introduction of the LMGT3 era in 2024, and has won seven of the 16 races since the introduction of the class, giving it a 43.75% win rate.

The Stuttgart engineers developed the aerodynamic package of their GT3 car; the upgrades includes new louvres on the front wheel arches, but the most significant changes have occurred at the rear of the car, including on the rear wing, to improve the car's driveability.

Credit: WEC

In the prologue, the No.92 The Bend Manthey car car finished 14th out of 18 GT3s, with a lap time of 1:43.312 set by Lietz himself. Although the No.92 failed to rank high, the lap time was only 0.614 seconds slower than the quickest time set by the Aston Martin which topped the timing sheets, and it was 0.464 seconds quicker than the other Porsche.

Lietz stayed positive: "Manthey was very well prepared, all of the drivers got enough laps so we feel ready for the race.

"We definitely hope for constant weather, even though in the prologue we had all the conditions and now are also ready for rain. Good weather would be nice for the fans and for the drivers. So at the end we hope for a trouble free race and a nice start to the season."

Lietz's wish for good weather should be mostly true. Saturday is forecast to be mostly dry, as is the first five hours of the race on Sunday - however the meteorologists predict the track could be hit by heavy rain in the final hour of the race.

As the winners of last year's race at Imola, Lietz and the rest of the No.92 squad are amongst the favourites to win this weekend. In FP2 on Friday, the Porsche finished 14th once again, but their true pace will be shown at 13:30 BST in qualifying for the 6 Hours of Imola.