Aston Martin, Toyota & ByKolles Commit to 2020 HyperCar Regulations
- Thread starter Paul Jeffrey
- Start date
The new regulations sond nice, and I am hyped for the new cars. But how will they mange to not be overtaken by the LMP2s, which currently do a 3:25-ish around LM. Will they be replaced by LMP3 cars?
No. They will get a power cut.
This "no hybrid 4WD engagement up until 120km/h and in the wet even later" is such bull****.
And additional BoP and more-weight-if-you-win-a-lot... why drive different cars at all?
If I were a bigger brand like Porsche, Ferrari, Mercedes, I wouldn't enter my car. It's bad advertisement when your most prestigious car normal people can buy (or the WEC equivalent of that car) keeps losing because any smart advantage the engineers designed into your hypercar is taken away. Most people won't even know that, they only hear in the news "Aston Martin Valkyrie beats Mercedes', Ferrari's and Porsche's fastest and most expensive cars at Le Mans" in the news.
I'd really like it if those cars would be very close to their road specs and features, maybe with a weak form of weight/power BoP. They could also think about a more complex scoring system than just race distance, rewarding fastest lap, fastest stint, best efficiency, highest reliability etc.? I'm talking out of my butt, I know.
And additional BoP and more-weight-if-you-win-a-lot... why drive different cars at all?
If I were a bigger brand like Porsche, Ferrari, Mercedes, I wouldn't enter my car. It's bad advertisement when your most prestigious car normal people can buy (or the WEC equivalent of that car) keeps losing because any smart advantage the engineers designed into your hypercar is taken away. Most people won't even know that, they only hear in the news "Aston Martin Valkyrie beats Mercedes', Ferrari's and Porsche's fastest and most expensive cars at Le Mans" in the news.
I'd really like it if those cars would be very close to their road specs and features, maybe with a weak form of weight/power BoP. They could also think about a more complex scoring system than just race distance, rewarding fastest lap, fastest stint, best efficiency, highest reliability etc.? I'm talking out of my butt, I know.
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Alpine is interested also
Source?Alpine is interested also
If nowadays you want to keep costs under control, bring manufacturers and have different cars competing for the win BoP + performance target (and maybe a homologation period) is the only way to go, that's how you keep manufacturers and sponsors happy since with all this it's up to reliability and driver line up (and some luck). I actually wish other series struggling to get manufacturers like IndyCar would do the same, would be a first for open wheels but I can see it being more successfull than now.
When the marketing/motorsport dude go to the CEO meeting if he can tell his boss the spending can be relatively low and still have a chance to win due to BoP I guess this sounds way better than requesting a $200m budget to win one race that matters.
In the end these regs are basically GT3 but faster and way cooler. If they manage to keep the cost target we could see grids close to 20 cars in the main class. I'm totally ok with that.
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I kind of agree with this if Le Mans was a stand alone race and the deal was: here are the rules, build your best and let's race. With a series though, a season becomes boring if the same people win every..... single...... time..... For a series that has a multiple race season, BoP is the way to go.
I rather watch a series with BoP, where close racing is artificially created, than something like F1, where everyone knows who will win after Saturday qualifying
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I have no idea why people are disagreeing with you, it's true that there is no need for BoP at Le Mans.
A lot of comments are that BoP creates close racing.
People... Le Mans has had more than it's share of close racing WITHOUT BoP!
Le Mans 2008, 2011, 2014, 2015, 2016... to name just a few of the top of my head. Those races where close, exciting, fought tooth and nail over the course of the entire 24 hours. 2011 had one of the closest finishes ever. If you don't believe me, look them up on youtube.
The WEC championship races where often equally as close.
And none of the racing, none of the excitement was created artificially. The only reason it's not as close at the moment is because no manufacturer is there to challenge Toyota. If there was...
BoP will kill the spirit of Le Mans. Pure and simple.
BoP is socialism applied to racing
Now get rid of the rose colored glasses and take a look at how things were in these years:
1 to 3 manufacturers had the chance of winning, the rest could be ignored.
When there were 3, 2 of them were from same car group, one of them (Porsche) only joined to prevent other brand (Audi) from having more wins than they did, if not for that it was unlikely they'd return to top class with those costs and as we saw once Audi left they had no reason to stay.
During all this time the class was incredible fragile and could end in the situation we are seeing now at any moment.
So yeah.. it was good, sure, the rules proved it could make close racing with very well pre set ICE and hybrid rules with a lot of freedom but in the real world those regs would fit F1 more than sports cars, this isn't the 90~early 00 anymore.
I actually wonder why F1 isn't using a copy of WEC rules from 2014 to 2016, they'd work a lot better there
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So that means confirmed or interested outfits so far are:
Alpine
Aston Martin
ByKolles
McLaren
Porsche
Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus
Toyota
BoP or no BoP if it opens up the door to having several outfits instead of just Porsche v Audi or Porsche v Toyota or a ridiculous situation like last year where Toyota finally gets their LeMans win b/c they were basically racing themselves then I'm for it. Especially if it means maybe we'll see some "new" names like these boutique outfits that only pop up in these series once in awhile.
I'm old school & have a simple formula: more cars = better. If we get a series where we could eventually have something like 10 different types of cars (or even more) then long may it reign.
Alpine
Aston Martin
ByKolles
McLaren
Porsche
Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus
Toyota
BoP or no BoP if it opens up the door to having several outfits instead of just Porsche v Audi or Porsche v Toyota or a ridiculous situation like last year where Toyota finally gets their LeMans win b/c they were basically racing themselves then I'm for it. Especially if it means maybe we'll see some "new" names like these boutique outfits that only pop up in these series once in awhile.
I'm old school & have a simple formula: more cars = better. If we get a series where we could eventually have something like 10 different types of cars (or even more) then long may it reign.
If they manage to get 10 teams running 2 cars each that's more than half of WEC grid in a single class already, I'm totally fine with that. They need to find a solution for GTE tho, if it got cheaper P2 teams could move to that class instead since P2 is going to make no sense with these new regs IMO
Well, with Ford leaving after this year & Aston Martin committing to hypercars, I wonder if GTE might be done altogether or moved to it's own sub-series in the Le Mans Cup eventually or something if they get a lot of entries in hypercars (H1?).
Aston GTE program will continue.
Funny thing once a P2 driver said some GTE Pro programs costs $30m, 30m for a GT program... good lord. The budget goal for the hypercar rules was 25m...
They need to drop these prices really. We may end up seeing GT3 replacing GTE if this budget target is met IMO
