Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus, so far the only American outfit set to field a prototype built to the new-for-2021 LM Hypercar rules in the FIA World Endurance Championship, has finally settled on its choice of engine for the 007 prototype that will now house a twin-turbocharged V-8 instead of an Alfa Romeo-derived twin-turbocharged V-6 as originally planned.

The late change in engine configuration pushes back the on-track debut

Racing a brand-new car is never easy. First off, you got to get through the building process of the first car, the mule, and then you must haul it to the headquarters of the governing body that's setting the standard in whatever racing series you're keen to enter your car in so that the folks over there can have their say on your car's legality.

After you've ticked off all those steps (as well as others I've skipped in an effort to not bore you out of your mind completely), you finally show up with your new car to a race meeting and proceed to race it. Only then do you begin to grasp the shortcomings of your racer and, depending on how many or few they are, you've got another race, this time against time itself, to figure out ways to improve the car before the next race comes by. In short, racing is insanely hard to get right. Every victory is the culmination of dozens upon dozens of factors, all (or at least an overwhelming majority) of which must be met.

It is, then, no wonder that Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus, a - by now - seasoned endurance racing team established by Jim Glickenhaus, has hit a few hurdles along the way after setting out to build the next All-American Le Mans winner. Glickenhaus' seemingly ludicrous decision came in 2018 after over half a decade of racing around Germany's vicious Nordschleife road course in the 24-hour race, one of the toughest races of its kind in the entire world. If successful, Glickenhaus would repeat the feat pulled staggering five-and-a-half decades ago by Shelby American Inc. and drivers Dan Gurney and A.J. Foyt.

Back in February, we found out Glickenhaus' original plans to fit an Alfa Romeo-based engine in the middle of its was thwarted by the concessions agreed to by the ACO and FIA in the eve of Aston Martin's announcement that it would commit to the LMDH class with the Valkyrie. The info became public only after Aston Martin pulled the plug on its still-unborn Valkyrie program.

To refresh everyone's memory, Glickenhaus claimed back then that "we began with Alfa Romeo, and they were very excited to go back to Le Mans with us and develop their 2.9-liter, twin-turbo V-6, which is really a Ferrari engine," the Team Boss told RACER Magazine.

"The problem happened when the rules changed at the ACO and we realized we needed to make an 850hp engine, and unfortunately, (at that output), the motor was not capable of running for 30 hours without interruption," Glickenhaus pointed out, adding in a ranty Facebook post on his team's page that " whining got the ACO to graciously change the rules to accommodate engine, blowing up our Alfa engines and causing Toyota to have to spend more money changing theirs."

While not particularly familiar to those who aren't into rallying, Pipo Moteurs is a French engine builder that's been around since 1973 and has a track record of wins mainly in World Rally Championship with teams like Peugeot and Ford, and Hyundai and European hillclimbing with BMW.

In Pipo Moteurs Glickenhaus found "a partner who was as avidly questing for the ultimate Le Mans win as we are," and the V-8 powering the 007 will be a bespoke unit, made to comply with the packing necessities in the middle of the car as dictated also by the shape of the engine cover and the placement of other subsystems. The engine, too, must not be too heavy as SCG aims to have the 007 come to within as near as possible of the WEC's minimum weight 2,425 pounds for Hypercar machinery.

Due to the ongoing pandemic, SCG's schedule was pushed back by a few months and, now, the team aims to have the Pipo Moteurs V-8 on the dyno by September whereas previously the car should've already completed its shakedown run by then. If things go according to plan, the first on-track rollout of the 007 will take place sometime in January ahead of a race debut in the FIA WEC in 2021, a championship that was affected by the pandemic as well.

Originally, the LM Hypercar (LMH) formula was poised to debut in the second half of 2020 when the new FIA WEC season was set to kick-off in September. However, the changes brought about by the COVID-19 situation forced the FIA and ACO to revert to its old ways and, instead of running a "winter" championship, the WEC will again run a Spring-to-Autumn format and the current season will be resumed by October with further rounds scheduled in November and December. SCG's main LMH rival, Toyota Gazoo Racing, will also debut its hybrid contender later than originally planned while nothing is known about the ByKolles car.

It's also worth noting that the LMDH class that will run at the sharp end in both the FIA WEC and the IMSA Weathertech Sportscar Championship is still set to debut in 2022 at the 24 Hours of Daytona, the opening round of North-America's premier sportscar championship. Until then, we hope the current world-wide tribulations caused by the pandemic will have, in the very least, eased off a bit as we're anxious to see Glickenhaus hit the track with the 007 (not to mention its smaller sibling, the 'Ring-bound 004C).