It's not long before the world's two most important sportscar racing series hit the road once again but all is not well in either the FIA World Endurance Championship or the IMSA-sanctioned Weathertech Sportscar Championship. Only three cars will make up the much-lamented Hypercar class when the FIA WEC will kick-off in March while IMSA's top GT class may soon be axed as only three cars have committed for the entire 2021 season.
How we've ended up here
This weekend, the IMSA Weathertech Sportscar Championship's army of competitors will come together for the first time since last year's 12 Hours of Sebring. The shorter-than-usual off-season (the finale took place in mid-November) is putting everyone under an additional level of stress and among those that can call themselves stressed ahead of the traditional ROAR Before The 24, the official pre-season test weekend, are the folks that run the show at IMSA.
We've talked a number of times about these new LMDh cars as well as their brethren over in the Hypercar camp. Hypercars will debut this year in the FIA WEC and they represent another take at making a top-flight prototype, one that's more akin to the old ways. In short, you've got a bespoke chassis and hybrid system that allows you to make use of AWD just like in the LMP1-Hybrid days. In LMDh, you must pick a chassis out of the four available from the LMP2 pool and the hybrid system is a standardized component.
Audi and Porsche have been among those that've said Yay! to LMDh while the early adopters of the Hypercar formula are Toyota and American squad Glickenahus, Peugeot also joining the fray next year.
All of that sounds good since the ultra-expensive LMP1-Hybrid class managed to kill itself over the span of three years while IMSA's own DPi category's four manufacturers became only three at the beginning of last year. But there's a silver lining that comes with this shift in manufacturer interest.
The labor is tough for Le Mans Hypercars
When the FIA and the ACO jointly announced the so-called hypercars, we all got weak in the knees as our minds were filled by late-'90s flashbacks of Porsche 911 GT1s, Mercedes-Benz CLK-LMs, and other such extreme GTs that could (and did) beat purpose-built prototypes. Sadly, a new-fangled GT1 class was never actually on the cards and what we'll actually be getting are slightly heavier, slightly bigger, and also significantly slower P1 cars. That's not an issue in and of itself since the performance levels are where they are now in order to allow for the much-awaited harmonization via Balance of Performance (BoP) once LMDh cars land in the top class two years from now.
And this feeling only grew more acute after the LMDh formula was announced in what can only be described as one of the biggest cases of broken communication between sanctioning bodies that we've ever seen. I mean, imagine you're on the board of an automaker looking to greenlight a Le Mans Hypercar program when, suddenly, the option to enter an LMDh prototype emerges. The latter option is cheaper, all while the same performance window is guaranteed. The choice, then, is an obvious one.
It proved to be obvious for both Porsche and Audi while others are poised to follow suit including GM (brand unknown, but we wager it could be Corvette) and Acura/Honda. Meanwhile, Glickenhaus and Toyota have stuck to their guns as did ByKolles although the Austrian outfit's shady way of operating has kept the progress on its prototype out of the limelight.
What we know for a fact - now that the full-season FIA WEC entry list has been released - is that five cars are set to contest the ninth season of the revamped globe-trotting endurance series. Only that's not actually true. While Toyota, the defending world champion, already unveiled its contender for this year, the GR010, Glickenhaus announced that it will be skipping the opening round of the season to allow for more track testing of the Pipo-engined 007.
Jim Glickenhaus underlined that at the root of the decision is both the ongoing pandemic as well as the tight deadline the team would have to commit to if it were to make the first round of the season that's set for March 19. The American stressed that he believes the race, which should take place at Sebring, won't happen at all, something that the FIA and ACO have not yet officially commented on.
"It’s not going to happen,” Glickenhaus told RACER, speaking about the Sebring season-opener. “So we, seeing this very early on, called up the ACO, and said, <
Glickenhaus went on to say that he believes the car will be ready for the homologation process in mid-March and also that he reckons the first WEC round will actually take place in Europe. "The first WEC race is going to be Monza and I think it’s going to be hopefully in late April," said the boss of SCG. "Then, they will do Spa and Le Mans. However, if the vaccine doesn’t roll out, and if this second coronavirus strain stays prevalent in Europe, I think they may just go back to four races," he added. The FIA confirmed on January 22 that the first round of the season will take place in Europe, but at Portimao in Portugal, not Monza. The eight-hour race is scheduled for April 2-4.
Away from any news regarding the pandemic, the fact is that we're left with three cars for the first race of the 2021 season: the two Toyota GR010s and the Alpine-entered ORECA/Rebellion R-13. The latter is a grandfathered non-hybrid P1 car, the same that Rebellion Racing has campaigned over the last two years. Now, in Alpine guise, the car will be significantly slower since hypercars are supposed to be as much as 20 seconds slower around Le Mans than old P1s.
The discussion on whether the sanctioning body will be able to balance the grandfathered P1 car with the two Toyotas is one that's key to the future of the FIA WEC but even if they get it right at the first time of asking, we'll still be cheering on a sad three-car top class in March. Or April, whenever they decide to host the race. Hopefully, though, this situation will change although, looking back at the Nissan story in 2015 and also at Ginetta's woes, it would come as a shock to none to hear Glickenhaus talk about further delays to his program - despite the deal struck with Joest that adds legitimacy to the program.
The GT conondrum
In the past few seasons when the battle at the sharp end of the field had been reduced to a sometimes dull tussle between the two Toyotas, fans had looked at the GTE-Pro ranks for the much-needed excitement.
Now, however, the expensive GTE platform has been tied to a pole and beaten repeatedly. Ford shuttered its program completely, Porsche ended its American participation, Aston Martin ended its WEC program, as did BMW who doubled down this year by reducing its American footprint to just the four big endurance rounds in IMSA's calendar.
In other words, while we've got healthy numbers and a real depth of talent in both LMP2 and GTE-Am, the WEC's GTE-Pro class has been drained to the point where it's just a Porsche v. Ferrari affair, each maker throwing two cars into the fight. In IMSA, the entry list for the 24 Hours of Daytona triumphantly announces a 50-car grid but only six of those feature in the GTLM class and, more worryingly, just half of them will do all 10 rounds after Daytona.
The six cars entered for Daytona are, in order: two factory-backed BMW M8s, two factory-backed Corvette C8.Rs, one Risi-entered Ferrari 488 GTE, and one Proton-backed and Weathertech Racing-entered Porsche GT3 RSR-19. The Porsche, bankrolled by the MacNeils will try to break Corvette's stride but, as Bell Motorsports and Lista Motorsports have shown in the past, privateers don't really stand a chance against Corvette Racing.
In the light of all this, pundits have predicted the impending end to what has been one of the most entertaining formulas in modern sportscar racing. Its rising costs (a full-season program in GTE-Pro is said to cost many millions of dollars, about as much as one in DPi) and a shift in manufacturer interest have contributed to its demise although GTEs will continue to race in the WEC, the European Le Mans Series, and at Le Mans, the European continent still full of teams wanting to race GTEs, unlike the American one.
What's the future going to look like?
Given the dozen or so GTE-Am entries that have propped up to do the WEC, GTEs will still be part of the show in the ACO-run series for at least a couple extra seasons, depending on whether the French organization budges on the topic of allowing GT3s on the grid of the 24-hour race. IMSA, on the other hand, already boasts with a GT3 class in GTD and most would agree that two GT3 classes will be on the menu in 2022 alongside DPI, LMP2, and LMP3.
One GT3 category will most likely cater towards former GTLM squads while the other will wear the clothes of GTD and stay true to the same Pro/Am structure. In addition, the all-Pro GT3 cars may be given bigger air restrictors allowing for a few extra ponies to better separate the two categories. We don't know what will happen yet but what's clear is that the burgeoning interest in prototype racing is eating into the healthy numbers we're used to seeing in the production-based classes. It's unlikely that we'll get to a point where the entire grid at Le Mans will be made up of a combination of Hypercars and LMP2s but it did happen before: between 1987 and 1992, Group C prototypes (C1 and C2) and the occasional GTPs were enough to populate the WEC and Le Mans.