[WEC] LMP Future Regulations (was Le Mans EVO rules - now hypercar rules)

[Deleted]

Why it is where it is:

A) It is the easiest and cheapest way to go racing, when you don't have to care about impilification of rules or having better engineering and development than the others
B) OEM marketing departments can claim you have superior competition to everywhere else not only in numbers but also on track with everything magically so close due to everybody pushing each other to the limit
C) The manufacturers have been eased off to thinking they can get whatevet they want - it started with FIA GT3's "whatever goes" attitude in 2005 but more recently intense lobbying and introduction of proam, cost-cap etc have paved way for this line of thinking to be the norm, not exception
D) Most of the audience either doesn't care of authenticity over entertainment, or they're not aware of how the system works behind the curtains in the first place
E) The organizing bodies are desperate

[carbsmith]

BoP isn't particularly desirable for pro drivers because it means driving to a pace almost every lap of every session or else ruining the team's season and presumably losing your job. In a 2 car team with 6 drivers you can't even tell who is fast because they're all doing the same lap time.

[chernaudi]

I'm in favor of getting rid of BOP, but it is what it is now, and there's nothing I can do about it. It's not like it was back in '98/'99 when car makers, in a favorable economy, were willing to spend bargeloads of money just to go faster than the other guys. That just doesn't work for the OEMs now. They want results, and they don't particularly care how they get them, as long as they spend as little money as possible and get the positive PR they want. Why do you think that Formula E is so popular with OEMs now?

I also think that racing would be well served to remember it's a sport, not H'wood entertainment or WWE sports entertainment. Just look at NASCAR qualifying from California Speedway and Texas Motor Speedway. Those were craptastic cluster-you-know-whats, resulting from NASCAR trying to put entertainment ahead of sport. Sometimes, the simplest solutions do work the best. Even if single car qualifying is a bore, even for a weekend pass holder, I'd bet that there's plenty of sights and sounds near the track that can occupy your time for a couple of hours. If I'd travel to such a place, I'd like to get a scope of the area, then watch the race. For sure, I'd do that if I went to Le Mans, for example.

But if you seriously want my advice, for the penny it's worth, you can either try and find something in it that you still enjoy, or maybe try and find something else that makes you happy. With Audi Sport being out of LMP1 and not having a GTE car out there, I don't really have anyone to root for, though I do like TMG and Rebellion. I've gotten to the point where I just wanna see cars go fast and have that be the show.

[Deleted]

I'm already lulling myself into the mindset that 2021-24 LM shall be fruitless trash and therefore kind of like an Olympic cycle break, until the return of hopeful true competition in 2025. It might just help one to keep going, wish that one day the nuclear fallout will vanish. In the meantime there's still 2019 and 2020. Maybe Audi or whoever will field a hydrogen G56 at some point too, I mean the "result" of it might be pointless unless the thing lasts for 24 hours but at least it would be tech incentive, not BoP and/or spec nonsense.

[chernaudi]

Oddly, I actually enjoyed watching LM last year the best that I did in a few years. I was able to relax and watch the race and enjoy it for what it was.

Mind you, I do miss the loud and proud, relatively speaking fire-breathing monsters of the 2000's and such, but the cars since then have been spectacular in the own way, too. I guess maybe it's kinda like my opinion of people, that, unless one's absolutely evil, we're all unique and beautiful in our own way. At least racing cars, being inanimate objects, won't get emotional or retaliate if we talk smack about them.

[Deleted]

Last year's race was fairly terrible due to the "mandatory stint length" nonsense enforcement + penalizing policy of hybrid (11) and nonhybrid (10), but in the grand scheme of things it was probably golden in comparison of what is to come.

[chernaudi]

Yeah, the stint lengths (which I hope aren't enforced this year) was stupid, but in some ways watching it on TV was like watching my first LM that wasn't taped in 2006. And at least if you had Velocity/Motor Trend in NA you could watch the whole race.

Granted, we're kinda getting away from the main gist of this thread by saying that. Whatever direction the ACO decides to go with the post 2020 regs, I hope that it's not a total dud. I still hope for interesting cars that deliver good performance, but we can only cross that bridge when we get there.

[Adam43]

Originally Posted by chernaudi

Granted, we're kinda getting away from the main gist of this thread by saying that.

Why stop now just when I'm hating it?

[andrewn7]

Originally Posted by Adam43

Why stop now just when I'm hating it?

The new hypercar rules look set to be a disaster and will probably also kill off GTE.

I might be in a minority of 1 here, but I don't understand why the ACO didn't just stick with the current rules, but mandate an OTS hybrid for lmp1 only?

[Deleted]

Agree spec hybrid might've been "boring" but the rest perfectly fine to last for another 5 years until Zero Emission. And if the OEMs know it's set on for that long, they can't lobby in whatever garbage they wish but have to build competitive LMP if they want to win Le Mans... And perhaps claim the honor for being the last ones to probably do it with conventionally powered vehicle.

But now the final combustional engine win will be achieved by some performance balanced Aston Martin GTE 2.0 "hyper" variant with smaller budget than for AMR-One, how exciting

[chernaudi]

Originally Posted by andrewn7

The new hypercar rules look set to be a disaster and will probably also kill off GTE.

I might be in a minority of 1 here, but I don't understand why the ACO didn't just stick with the current rules, but mandate an OTS hybrid for lmp1 only?

I don't know why they didn't just update the 2013 regs into the current formula instead of IMO trying to reinvent the wheel, but you'd have a better time asking them because I don't know what their motivation was. Whatever it was, it resulted in a formula where Audi Sport and Toyota/TMG ultimately spent easily twice their 2013 budgets each season by 2016. Even TMG/Toyota now are still probably spending around $100 million a season. And they probably spent a fraction of that (though sizable) in 2013.

I know that my big thing is "don't dream it, be it" (just look at my signature and avatar), but we also have to be a bit realistic, too. As in control what we can, and try not to sweat what we can't change too much. IMO, I think that the ACO got too ambitious with the 2014-present regs and it ultimately came back to bite them.

[Deleted]

Meanwhile in less depressing topics than the awaiting horrors of 2021-2024, the modified hydrogen ADESS LMP3 has circulated the Bugatti circuit
http://www.dailysportscar.com/2019/0...t-le-mans.html

And apparently they drank water emissions from the car afterwards which sounds cool
https://www.lemans.org/en/news/bertr...humanity/51217

"Le Mans will do a world of good for humanity" hmm-h though

[Deleted]

I wonder if they'll still go ahead with the proposed spec tires and success ballast now that it will be just a BoP class. Seems redundant (not that it wasn't before but you know).

[TF110]

Hopefully the small things change to add up to something big that is more appealing to people who don't want spec this and that. There's time left.

[Deleted]

Is there time though? Shouldn't people already be starting the design phases soon

[TF110]

I think the design part is not the big deal. The little things like the weight, power, bop talk etc. is what can be changed. These cars are going to be running ballast so there shouldn't be a problem with them changing it to sub 1000kg. I'm sure the engines can do more than 680hp also and bop should be limited to weight penalties. Those are my ideas at least.

[chernaudi]

@ Chiana: I'm of the opinion that time's getting short and that the ACO should've had some concrete tech regs by now. Granted, us fans and forum people aren't privy to what the teams can get their hands on until the ACO or the teams make such details public. But the ACO would be prudent to have something discernible put together other than ideas at this stage.

@ TF110: Fair enough and agreeable enough points in my opinion. But refer to my comments above about the ACO having something more solid than what they've publicly admitted to having so far, and that time's getting tight IMO.

Also, as I've seen and we've probably all seen with stuff like F1, NASCAR and road racing, what we want isn't necessarily what the sanctioning body wants to pull off, and it sometimes doesn't make sense or work out in their favor.

[Deleted]

Originally Posted by TF110

I think the design part is not the big deal. The little things like the weight, power, bop talk etc. is what can be changed. These cars are going to be running ballast so there shouldn't be a problem with them changing it to sub 1000kg. I'm sure the engines can do more than 680hp also and bop should be limited to weight penalties. Those are my ideas at least.

If it's supposed to be a class where everybody has identical lap times and stints for 24 hours, with no room for anything else, there's no way BoP is limited to just weight penalties

Originally Posted by chernaudi

@ Chiana: I'm of the opinion that time's getting short and that the ACO should've had some concrete tech regs by now. Granted, us fans and forum people aren't privy to what the teams can get their hands on until the ACO or the teams make such details public. But the ACO would be prudent to have something discernible put together other than ideas at this stage.

@ TF110: Fair enough and agreeable enough points in my opinion. But refer to my comments above about the ACO having something more solid than what they've publicly admitted to having so far, and that time's getting tight IMO.

Also, as I've seen and we've probably all seen with stuff like F1, NASCAR and road racing, what we want isn't necessarily what the sanctioning body wants to pull off, and it sometimes doesn't make sense or work out in their favor.

One would think that concrete regs (if such can even exist in a class of "do whatever you want") would be out by June the latest... but that's just 14-15 months before the first race

[ApexTurtle]

Maybe I'm too far off base but it seems to me some parties like Aston Martin deliberately dawdle just so they can get whatever they want because the ACO needs cars on the grid. That's the reason they've just given up and have gone the lazy BoP route.

[chernaudi]

Well, we can look back to ALMS '06 when AMR/Prodrive got a lot of favorable BOP in large part because of junk Pirelli tires (and they had an ALMS sponsorship deal with Pirelli, and they did a LM-only deal with Michelin).

I understand that Aston Martin isn't the biggest car maker in the world, but sometimes, you gotta put your money/R&D/whatever where your mouth is, and put up or shut up. Not saying that's what AMR or others are trying to pull on the ACO, who no longer have Volkswagen Group programs to line their pockets and give them what they want. But I wouldn't put it past some of these guys, either.

[Deleted]

Before the 2012 season, that was the one and only time they got their lobby wishes granted though - and even that was in IMSA land, not ACO. DBR9, and 550 GTS Maranello for that matter, were both very good cars, and even the Lola AMR was pretty solid for budget-class petrol P1. Of their clearly crappier products, a la 2008 Vantage GT2 and AMR-One, only the first one got the "free gift back", for the 2012 season and ever onwards, but by that point GTE had been corrupted into full BoP/waiver class anyway.

In any case and as I always say, it's not their fault at trying to lobby/bribe the organizer, it is the fault of the organizer to give up for the demands out of desperation. And why should the likes of Aston Martin bother producing good racing products when they can just slap in whatever cheap mediocrity and get away with it... you can't fault them...

[TF110]

Originally Posted by Chiana

If it's supposed to be a class where everybody has identical lap times and stints for 24 hours, with no room for anything else, there's no way BoP is limited to just weight penalties



One would think that concrete regs (if such can even exist in a class of "do whatever you want") would be out by June the latest... but that's just 14-15 months before the first race

Weight penalties are already there in the form of success ballast so... imo that's the only "bop" they need tinker with. 1000-1050kg(?), 700hp +275hp ers, 2000mm wide etc. Success ballast is gone for Le Mans anyway so it seems like it should be a formula that governs the rules. That's what I hope for with the rules yet to be finalized.

[chernaudi]

That's what I'm hoping for, but we've seen the ACO screw things up monumentally before, too.

[Deleted]

Originally Posted by TF110

Weight penalties are already there in the form of success ballast so... imo that's the only "bop" they need tinker with. 1000-1050kg(?), 700hp +275hp ers, 2000mm wide etc. Success ballast is gone for Le Mans anyway so it seems like it should be a formula that governs the rules. That's what I hope for with the rules yet to be finalized.

The whole lunatic idea of Balance of Performance is to have everyone performing everything identically (well when pretending politics don't exist), you cannot achieve that with weight only. Why else would they bother with constant RPM, air restrictor, fuel tank, fuel flow restrictor, gurney etc tweak nonsense in GTE either

[Deleted]

http://www.dailysportscar.com/2019/0...ard-neveu.html

“As a motorsport fan I cannot say I am a big enthusiast of BoP but we will have to see how this goes . We have very good expertise in this area, the results in GTE are not so bad, and we will work on the principle of how it will work.”

Riight

Very confidence raising