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

[skycafe]

Oh brother. That would kill WEC.

(Nascar is leaning hybrid! )

[deggis]

"uncouple itself from the WEC"

What? ACO = WEC.

Once again it felt like Pruett had trouble hiding his WEC-hate in the article.

[chernaudi]

Other than getting the FIA out of the ring (who in reality from what I can tell do just about nothing as far as the day to day running of the WEC as far as technical regs and most sporting regs), how would the ACO getting rid of the WEC fix anything.

The ACO are the cause of most of their own problems. Perhaps we can maybe blame the FIA a bit for the expensive ultra-hybrid systems and the fuel flow meters, both of which have been known to be Todt's pets, but the ACO effectively ran the show.

[TheMightyM]

Originally Posted by deggis

"uncouple itself from the WEC"

What? ACO = WEC.

Once again it felt like Pruett had trouble hiding his WEC-hate in the article.

No, on two accounts.

WEC = FIA + ACO and though both (effectively) French, they don't necessarily agree. The FIA side are the people most pushing hypercar.

And to repeat, Graham Goodwin has also been saying that proceeding with the WEC isn't a given going forward.

[chernaudi]

Originally Posted by TheMightyM

No, on two accounts.

WEC = FIA + ACO and though both (effectively) French, they don't necessarily agree. The FIA side are the people most pushing hypercar.

And to repeat, Graham Goodwin has also been saying that proceeding with the WEC isn't a given going forward.

Well, could you explain this to me: if the FIA have such a vital role in the operations of the WEC, how come all the people who go out on public record in interviews and such are ACO employees or big wigs? I still think that the FIA are just there to give the "world championship" status and do little to help out the series. Though I do agree that if they are pushing for certain things, they're probably hindering it as much as the ACO themselves are.

[deggis]

Originally Posted by TheMightyM

No, on two accounts.

WEC = FIA + ACO and though both (effectively) French, they don't necessarily agree. The FIA side are the people most pushing hypercar.

The question about hypercars but who is running the series. The key people have ACO-background, ACO has clearly written most of the rulebook while FIA has merely rubber-stamped it and ACO is also the promoter of the series via a separate company.

And to repeat, Graham Goodwin has also been saying that proceeding with the WEC isn't a given going forward.

In which context? Perhaps FIA doesn't like a world championsip without any OEMs so it can end that way too.

[Adam43]

Mighty, you are vociferous in your reply to the point of put down, but let’s face it this news is quite a departure and people’s surprise is understandable. I hope that hasn’t set the tone for the discussion.

[TF110]

I respect GG and Pruett, but I think it's a reach to assume that DPi 2.0 is the favored option, and that's mostly what these articles are concluding. Meanwhile we have Toyota, ByKolles, Glickenhaus and others that have said theyre ready for hypercar or GTP. The Ford thing shows that DPi isn't what they're after, at least not in the form of p2's with some spec mild hybrid.

[Maelochs]

Originally Posted by Mike E

'And, if all I’ve learned is accurate, the ACO might uncouple itself from the WEC and realign directly with IMSA.'

Really? How would that work?

https://racer.com/2019/05/28/pruett-...ity-check/amp/

Originally Posted by TheMightyM

Yup, apparently a possibility. And it's not just Marshall Pruett saying it; Graham Goodwin has also said it as well. And think something more like ILMC than the current WEC.

This is what caught my eye when I read Pruett’s article. Ford leaving was no surprise … but the potential deal between IMSA and ACO is big.

I think like this: ACO has the property everyone wants. People around the world (except us) couldn’t care less about races in Bahrain or most of the WEC schedule. Le Mans is The Race, and everything else is …. Wait, there are other races?

ACO is looking at a lame Le Mans in 2020 if no one signs on for Hypercar …. The news of the rule failure will dominate the media and the race will lose a lot of luster. And right now, Everyone in the racing business and many other businesses is willing to spend big on Le Mans. If the race loses prestige, it loses appeal, and it starts heading into a death-spiral, until it is is just another race.

IMSA has a very businesslike view of “Automotive Competition Entertainment,” if you will. They understand that mainly they are putting on a show, Not proving one manufacturer against another, and that the manufacturer involvement is about publicity for the manufacturers and money for the series—so whatever has to be done to keep the manufacturers happy, has to be done.

Sure, IMSA might lose Ford, which wants a radical hybrid … but it is keeping all the other makes which seem to want the low costs of a minimal spec system and also the publicity hook of “Hybrid.”

ACO and IMSA realize that they are businesses, and that the actual on-track product is not the point—Selling the on-track product is the point.

FIA seems to live in a fantasy world where everybody wants cutting-edge, super-space-age everything, where cost is no object, and where … well it is like IndyCar in the 1970s … the world has moved on but the sanctioning body is trying to remake the 1950s or 1960s.

IndyCar has learned that people will watch spec cars as readily as they will watch low-number specials or one-offs. IndyCar has learned that the racing has to be affordable to the teams, And the product has to be saleable, for the teams and the series to survive.

IMSA has figured out these same things, after seeing ALMS crash and Grand-Am go basically bankrupt. IMSA has learned that fans want to see fast, loud, swoopy-looking cars, and if a lot of them look pretty similar, that’s okay. If they are all running big, simple OHV V8s that’s okay. Fans will buy tickets, and sponsors will sign checks.

ACO realizes that FIA doesn’t really understand—it is Not a business. It doesn’t need to make money. Any business, seeing rising costs drive away customers (competitors) in the number and with the frequency that FIA has scared off manufacturers, would be asking itself and its customers how to make the series more profitable … and would be Really listening, and would be willing to compromise.

Any business, seeing Peugeot pull out and having to beg Toyota to enter early to keep the whole house of world-championship cards from collapsing, would have made sure that Never happened again—and yet, here we are five years later with only one team in the top class. And does the FIA ask “Why don’t manufacturers perceive us as offering better RoI? How can we become more appealing and more remunerative?”

No. It instead muddles around as if the biggest car manufacturers in the world are as badly managed as the FIA. FIA executives plan to announce Some sort of plan in a couple weeks, giving major car companies one year to design programs, sell the programs to their boards, get budgets, and start trying to build … not knowing if the class requirements might change again, or whether the FIA rulebook even makes sense. If I ran a car company I would say, “Let’s either wait until they get something provably functional, or let’s find better places to race … if racing even makes sense in terms of promotion and B2B connections.”

ACO sees two potential business partners—FIA which is mainly good at spending other people’s money, making too many rules changes, or making bad parts—like the FIA-mandated fuel flow device which cost Toyota a car at Le Mans a couple years back—and IMSA, which has shown that it sees everything it does as a business which must have a positive bottom line.

Also, IMSA has proven that it can stage entertaining 12- and 24-hour races with its machinery. If ACO adopted DPi, it could have a guaranteed decent race, and likely a lot of manufacturers could be convinced to make the relatively small investment—stick a GT3 motor in the back of an LMP2? Change the doors? That’s it? No $120 million budget? A $20 million budget is Extravagant?

If I were an ACO official, I would know I had what Everyone wants—I have Le Mans. I have control of The bargaining chip in international racing. And IMSA is going to respect that? IMSA is going to work With me to make sure that we have solid fields of fast, reliable cars? IMSA has a philosophy of “Make it work and make it make money” instead of “Kiss my FIA ring and spend money,”?

Maybe ACO is leaking the “news” as a threat—or maybe, Scott Atherton et al. have spent a lot of time talking to a lot of people and selling the IMSA view of racing as a successful business instead of racing as a series of panic attacks as teams go broke, rules change arbitrarily every season, and everything costs more than everything else.

Maybe ACO is pretending to be looking at dropping FIA in order to gain leverage over FIA … but if not, what does FIA bring to the table? The title “World Championship,” which only matters to a very few people, and …. Bad business, high costs, big egos, and bad negotiating skills.

I don’t care anyway … I will watch whatever I can find on TV or online, and I will enjoy it. But for people who have any sort of financial involvement with international sports car racing ….. I could see them asking what exactly FIA has done for them lately.

[chernaudi]

Could this also be an indictment that Todt in many ways has proven to be just as bad as Balestre and Mosley as far as being so damned F1-centric that it's tinted his views towards other series?

Todt seemed to promise that it's not the case when he first became FIA President, but it seems that he's fallen into that same trap.

Mind you, I don't like quite a bit of what IMSA has done and I don't like the direction that the ACO have gone in since 2009, but the FIA does seem to mess up about everything it touches nowadays. There's a reason there's no FIA GT Championship anymore (at least as far as FIA-branding) and why the SRO runs all of that now. It seems that all the FIA care about is F1 and they try and shoehorn that model into anything else it sanctions or co-sanctions, with predictable results.

The FIA can barely make F1 work right now. And they think that model will work for sportscar racing?

https://media.giphy.com/media/3og0IG...iQak/giphy.gif

Please. Big egos and overly complicated rules a good racing series doesn't make.

[TheMightyM]

Originally Posted by deggis

In which context? Perhaps FIA doesn't like a world championship without any OEMs so it can end that way too.

On the MP + GG podcast, the potential of something other than continuing with the WEC as we know it today has been mentioned in passing for perhaps the last month. AFAIK, they haven't addressed the issue — why, how, what next etc. — directly yet.

Might the FIA pull the plug because of declining manufacturer interest? Maybe -- but a lack of manufacturer money might also forces major changes before then. Toyota competing just against privateers in the WEC as we know it today is not sustainable.

[carbsmith]

IMSA is still pretty precarious for manufacturers. If GM decided they really don't need to race in NASCAR, IndyCar, and IMSA (and with Cadillac having no idea what the heck they're doing with the brand generally that's not unlikely really) then you have two classes immediately pitched into late ALMS/PC/current P2 levels of borderline viability. Daytona, Sebring, and Petit pulling in GTD customers is what floats the whole series otherwise they would also be scraping car counts pretty hard.

DPi is just designed to be low commitment enough for the manufacturer boards to rubber stamp it without thinking too hard about it hoping they can survive that way. ACO is so far unsuccessfully trying to address the fundamental appeal of sports car racing for car makers. Although yet again, 2014-2016 was the highest point for Le Mans in 15 years, as an international sport in almost 25, so it's not like there was no positive results in that direction.

There's also a big difference in positions. Without manufacturer involvement Daytona would gather maybe 30 cars? Le Mans doesn't need a single factory team to fill a 55 car field. Just getting cars isn't a problem, so their concerns are more "1st world" if you will.

Originally Posted by Maelochs

IndyCar has learned that people will watch spec cars as readily as they will watch low-number specials or one-offs. IndyCar has learned that the racing has to be affordable to the teams, And the product has to be saleable, for the teams and the series to survive.

No they haven't, because IndyCar viewership is still god awful.

[deggis]

Originally Posted by carbsmith

No they haven't, because IndyCar viewership is still god awful.

Depends what is the benchmark. Would be interesting to blame this on the spec-chassis formula while ignoring the still present damage caused by the split and one of the main reasons why Nascar was able to grow at the expense of CART/Indycar.

[Deleted]

The mere mention of ILMC brings joy to me... Even if it's bias or whatever that is being reported here.

Anyway... Vincent Beaumesnil has had interesting attitude towards the FIA in the past

Please, don’t say FIA. Keep in mind that the rules are made by the FIA and the ACO. I don’t understand why people say the FIA has decided. The FIA doesn’t decide anything. The FIA and ACO are running working groups, so it is not the FIA that decides. It has to be very clear.

-- I have asked the FIA to make sure they write the correct statements--

https://www.racecar-engineering.com/...nt-beaumesnil/

[Deleted]

The race week ACO press conference for presumably "final" update will be on Friday 10-11AM, at the Fan zone / village
https://assets.lemans.org/explorer/p...-mans-2019.pdf

[TheMightyM]

GG's latest thoughts on the future on the WEC can be found at about the 27:20 point of the latest “This Week in Sports Cars” podcast.

I’s also like to wish Marshall Pruett’s wife the best wishes toward a speedy recovery. We’re all pulling for you!

[S griffin]

Just started listening to it, hope it's a good podcast.

Hearing about his wife, I too hope she recovers in time

[chernaudi]

I'm going to quote a post from Midweek Motorsports submitted by Radio Show Limited on MM's Facebook page, because it describes how political this whole mess is:

"The FiA through the TSC, are under a directive from President Jean Todt to electrify or add hybrid to all world championships. Todt presumably believes that having been ignored by the Nobel Committee for his Road Safety initiatives he might catch their eye for a green agenda.

ACO - President Pierre Fillon is alleged to be behind the GTE ++ solution, allowing current GTE cars to run for outright victory - presumably the ACO hope this might convince the GT Manufacturers to spend more money on activation which, other than Porsche, they have not done as yet.

LMEM - This is the company that runs the WEC, ELMS, Asian LMS and Michelin Le Mans Cup/ Road to Le Mans on behalf of the ACO - They, under Gerard Neveu, are said to favour DPi style regulations - possibly even adopting Dpi as a package. This is a pragmatic and, for anything in motorsport, an unusually common sense view. It's been suggested that this "third way" is being pushed to try and avoid a falling out between FiA and ACO which would see Le Mans go back to being an invitational, stand alone event and possibly that would threaten the future of the FiAWEC, which looks a little difficult to justify fir anyone without the inclusion of Le Mans 24 , especially if WEC has different technical regulations."

After reading this, tell me who should stay and who should pound sand. I think that everyone's partly responsible for the problem, but the FIA are becoming a thorn in the side of road racing, and it's little wonder why IMSA are basically doing things their way.

[deggis]

That paste tastes better with a nice scoop of salt.

[chernaudi]

If that shows how hard it is for the sanctioning bodies/factions to get on the same page, how can we expect anyone else involved as a stakeholder to have much faith in the series?

I'm starting to think that with the WEC there's too many cooks in the kitchen, and maybe the WEC--at least as we know it--needs to be a casualty to get some sense of normalcy back.

[Deleted]

"They, under Gerard Neveu, are said to favour DPi style regulations - possibly even adopting Dpi as a package. This is a pragmatic and, for anything in motorsport, an unusually common sense view"

Well we sure know where RLM allegiances lay then...

[pablocomics]

So... acording with those three different points of view, the hypercars are dead before born

[TF110]

I'll believe it when I see it, that goes for any new class actually. Might as well stick with what you have.

[Tique]

The below interview (in french) of Olivier Panis the team Manager of Panis Barthez Compétition is quite interesting.


https://www.endurance-info.com/fr/ol...ons-pour-2020/


He is just hoping that the ACO will not screw it up !

[Mike E]

'Success handicaps' OK with Toyota.

So, BoP style fiddling at individual cat level.

https://www.motorsport.com/wec/news/...mpression=true