Just some food for thought from Doug Fehan on the Corvette program and why they currently don't participate in WEC.
I do think that Lexus/TRD North America, and Toyota Japan / TMG are two "silos" as Fehan calls it, which both would find value in jointly developing a prototype that could race IMSA and WEC.
Similar relationship and incentive with Acura/HPD, and Honda Japan.
Come on! Are we really using the ex pseudo Mazda lola LMP and wondering why that car never went to Le Mans???
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Is there any chance we see WEC involvement from Corvette in the foreseeable future, with GTE Pro so strong?
“The real answer is that General Motors is a huge conglomerate of brands, divisions and companies. They all run separately but are owned and run by the same people, there are just completely different silos. It’s the same in North America and Asia. This programme is driven by Chevrolet of North America, and we have a limited budget, and it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense for the North American budget to support things going on in other countries.
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“If we could get some of those other countries to participate, and find the value in it, then I’m sure we could run a global programme in the WEC. But that would take separate GM companies coming together, which isn’t easy to do. Le Mans is the exception because it’s the holy grail of all of motorsport. Would we like to do WEC as well? Of course, but we can’t burden North America financially with that. And, by the way, we are also limited in the number of Corvettes we can make and we have a much greater demand in Europe than we can meet.”
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