DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – They first met in 2016 at Porsche Night of Champions, the annual Stuttgart gala celebrating the company’s success in motorsports.
Matt Campbell had just been hired to join Porsche Motorsport’s junior program, while Mathieu Jaminet was entering his second season.
“It turned out to be a bit of a party,” Campbell recalled. “Obviously, we had a good time, but we didn’t have a working relationship until a couple of years after that. We didn’t really know each other well or do much together in the beginning, but later we were able to hang out together and got along extremely well.”
Nine years after that initial encounter, an unlikely pair – a 29-year-old Australian and a 30-year-old Frenchman – have become fast friends. They’re weeks away from teaming up in Porsche Penske Motorsport’s No. 6 Porsche 963 for the 2025 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship season.
While they didn’t necessarily connect at the party, they did a few weeks later at Porsche’s training camp. They shared similar status in the gathering of talented and experienced drivers at camp: They were newbies.
“This is where we really started to get to know each other and spend some time among other drivers,” Jaminet said. “We were both the young guys. We meshed pretty early and pretty well.”
Five years after that training camp, Campbell and Jaminet teamed together as full-season co-drivers for Pfaff Motorsports, helping the team win the 2022 driver, team and manufacturer championships in the WeatherTech Championship Grand Touring Daytona Pro (GTD PRO) class.
They credit compatibility – the ease and comfort with which they work together – as a primary reason for their success.
“It’s extremely important to be compatible with your teammate, definitely in more ways than one,” Campbell said. “Mathieu and I have proven this in the past, having driven together for a number of years.”
It’s not just that they’re on the same page. They’re on the same sentence on that page.
“We definitely share the same vision about racing,” Jaminet said. “We like the same aspects around the car, and we like to work the same way with the people around us. Between us, there is a good friendship on and off the track. We also spend quite some time together outside racing, which is not very common with teammates. There’s no ego. We just try to help and support each other for the best.”