DPs didn't
have to go faster. Peter Baron in particular would have preferred to stay with what they had, factually speaking Shank would have, and I'm sure the guys who sold their cars entirely would have too. Everybody talks up class overlap with GTE but after they nerfed PCs into the dirt last year they ran the same pace as old DPs anyways while being significantly worse in traffic.
I'm not sure how Pickett is guaranteed to win a 24 hour race when they were consistently awful in enduros.
I would be surprised if either number is even close. The amount of money burned on the Fords has to be pretty horrifying.
IMSA P is a six car class though. Okay, seven if you count cars that are slower than PCs.
Actually they dumped three cars to make it possible for potentially four cars to win the races.
I think it's pretty presumptuous to say that disinterest in the category and direction of the series had nothing to do with leaving racing. Remember he looked at IndyCar as well but apparently that didn't do it for him either.
It was persistently rumoured Porsche intended a dual P1 program, which considering how many US specific racing programs Porsche has had (Can-Am, 962C, CART, RS Spyder, GT America etc.) should not come across as flippant or unrealistic.
It's odd when I think about the long running argument that DPs have to run for overall wins or else they're being cheated of exposure—since when did DPs have significant sponsorship? Ganassi ran a pay driver for years (sometimes while getting paid by the series to boot) and now has absolutely nothing on the car but Ford. AXR had nothing until this season. WTR's sponsorship is from a personal connection. Whelen sponsored a GT car so top billing couldn't have been that important. Starworks, 8Star, GAINSCO, Shank, etc., you'd be hard pressed to come up with any significant external funding between them. The reality is nouveau-IMSA jacked up what was primarily a Pro-Am rent a ride class by forcing it into an expensive factory category to suit a small minority (okay screw it, Jim France's personal preference) Grand Am diehards will even tell you the same thing, although they try to pin the blame with ALMS naturally.
Notice as well how many of the DP teams bailed for PC which has the same speed and business model and seem to be perfectly okay with being a support class there. It works so well that they want to keep it exactly the same even though most of the fanbase is somewhere between apathetic and outright disdainful of its existence.