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Fact is that if something like a more open form of DPI was allowed into the ACO's LMP1 privateer regs, it'd work and you'd have more entries. As mentioned, not every car maker who wants to have something to do with LMP1 wants to spend Toyota's $80-100 million, let alone Porsche's $200 million, or run hybrid systems. Not to mention that LMP1H might be only a two or three car class at LM next year if the rumors of Porsche pulling out in favor of focusing on their GTE program and waiting to see what happens with the 2020 regs are accurate )or get replaced with another Volkswagen Group program).
And the other way, if DPIs can easily run to LMP1 privateer speeds on LMP1 spec open tires and at relatively little cost, let them into LMP1 privateer and let LMP1 privateer cars run in IMSA. I'm pretty sure that GM is probably spending LMP1 privateer level money on the Cadillac DPI program anyways, and they reportedly want to sell more customer cars beyond the three entries that are currently running them.
The only guys who might lose out (or, possibly, rather have a conflict of interest) is Dallara. They're developing a new LMP1 with SMP Racing that may or may not have much to do with their LMP2/DPI cars (granted, LMP2/DPI and LMP1 share chassis regs under both ACO and IMSA technical regulations). So there's a risk that Dallara might have two very different cars in the same class, so one or the other could get axed under the same scenario unless SMP wants to run the car as their own and only have Dallara build it.
At this stage, it's not like GM have the same deal that Audi Sport had with Dallara from 2006-2013 where Dallara couldn't really build their own LMP cars because of the Audi Sport deal prior to Audi Sport having YCom handle their LMP1 chassis construction (ironically, YCom already were building bodywork and other stuff Dallara wasn't dating back to the first days of the R10 program).
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