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

[TF110]

Whatever has to be done to keep the cars close together it seems they're ok with, just not for Le Mans. It's only for success though, so it looks like it will affect Toyota more than anyone else, which is basically what people are calling for if you read around the casual comments on different sites.

[Akrapovic]

How does the success ballast work though? Is it like BTCC where it's set amount for positions? So first gets 30kg, second gets 25kg etc? Or is it going to stack, so every time you win you get an additional 30kg?

The first way won't work. The second way will produce a 14 ton Toyota.

[TF110]

Originally Posted by Akrapovic

How does the success ballast work though? Is it like BTCC where it's set amount for positions? So first gets 30kg, second gets 25kg etc? Or is it going to stack, so every time you win you get an additional 30kg?

The first way won't work. The second way will produce a 14 ton Toyota.

Sounds like it will work as a points scored=kg added, up to a certain weight? That was the proposal at least according to what motorsport.com says. But then there's fuel flow reduction and lower hybrid power in addition to that so...

[Deleted]

"He stressed that the system would only apply to the shorter WEC races and not to the Le Mans 24 Hours."

At first I thought, fine whatever as long as the one race that matters doesn't get screwed further, but then I remembered I do care of the new Sebring as well, and now that'll get messed up with this nonsense.

It was pretty funny on MWM how Daman pretty much implied that success ballast is what makes series "entertainment racing" (read: fake show wrestling), and would WEC as well now be that... In addition to not being worth FIA world championship. But then he never seems to say the same for say Creventic's nonsense circus trickery he covers for radio. Why is succes ballast a travesty but BoP & waivers & jokers aren't? Otherwise, he and Hindy had a pretty good conversation on this and Hypercar last Wednesday.

[Akrapovic]

Creventic is a different thing, as that's not for us fans. That's a series run purely for amateurs to drive around and enjoy their spare time. They even said that if too many Pros enter, or Pros complain about the Ams then they'll get rid of the Pros. Creventic should do whatever it does to keep the customers happy - and we aren't the customers.

For WEC, I've kinda stopped caring for the current rule set. The success ballast won't work. We all know it won't work, but they have to be seen to do something. By Sebring the Toyota would have to weigh the same as a small planet, and even then it would win. We're not only expecting the privateer teams to overcome the enormous technical advantage, but also the factory car preperation, factory driver simulator time and preperation, factory strategy abilities, tyres built to suit their driver and the hybrid torque advantage.

Anyone who really thinks the privateers can take it to a factory team is having a giraffe. The sooner we accept this and move on, rather than attempting to balance it, the better.

But since the next generation of regulations changes every weekend, we're yet to see an end in sight.

[carbsmith]

Originally Posted by TF110

Sounds like it will work as a points scored=kg added, up to a certain weight? That was the proposal at least according to what motorsport.com says. But then there's fuel flow reduction and lower hybrid power in addition to that so...

Exactly the same way GT500 works, or would work if they had hybrids anyways.
https://supergtworld.wordpress.com/2...tice-scrapped/

Dunno where someone gets the idea you absolutely can't ballast the Toyotas enough to lose, if you can make the Mazda 787 into a race winner you can do just about anything with enough weight.

[chernaudi]

Another rumor complements of SC365: a Volkswagen Group brand representative did attend recent meetings concerning the new LMP1 regs.

The answers as to which brand are obvious in so far as it would probably have been Porsche, Audi, Bentley or Lamborghini. Doesn't narrow it down, but those are the "sporting" and performance brands from VAG.

As I said, this should probably be taken as a rumor for now.

[Akrapovic]

Originally Posted by carbsmith

Exactly the same way GT500 works, or would work if they had hybrids anyways.
https://supergtworld.wordpress.com/2...tice-scrapped/

Dunno where someone gets the idea you absolutely can't ballast the Toyotas enough to lose, if you can make the Mazda 787 into a race winner you can do just about anything with enough weight.

The Mazda 787B didn't have particularly good speed, despite the huge weight advantage. It qualified badly and took advantage of poor reliability of the other cars. Unless the new BoP mandates car failures, you won't end up with this sort of situation.

The reasons why you can't just ballast up the Toyota have already been gone over. See IMSA LMP2 v DP in traffic as to why weight does not undo torque when laptimes are equal.

Elephant in the room: Why are doing success ballast? So we can put weight on the Toyota. So why don't they just add the weight to the Toyota from round 1? The reason Toyota are fine with this is that it doesn't include Le Mans and because it'll take Toyota 5 races to accumulate the required amount of weight to give anyone else a sniff of a chance anyway. So the first few races will still be easy wins, it's just that by round 3 they'll be winning by 1 lap rather than 4 laps.

I don't really mind if they equalise the cars or not. But if they're going to do it, then stop arsing around with stupid half measures. This flip-flopping and half-arsed ideas are making the ACO look like absolute amateurs. Similar to the next generation rules. What are they? Nobody knows because they change every week.

[chernaudi]

To be fair to the ACO, though they haven't exactly been a voice of either competence, let alone confidence, the promotional arm of the ACO and the FIA are also partly to blame here, as I've mentioned, at least according to Radio Le Mans/Midweek Motorsports.

It also seems to be that people just aren't on the same page and are kinda jerking each other around, too. Not a good situation.

[joeb]

Originally Posted by chernaudi

Another rumor complements of SC365: a Volkswagen Group brand representative did attend recent meetings concerning the new LMP1 regs.

The answers as to which brand are obvious in so far as it would probably have been Porsche, Audi, Bentley or Lamborghini. Doesn't narrow it down, but those are the "sporting" and performance brands from VAG.

As I said, this should probably be taken as a rumor for now.

I thought lots of people attend those meetings, like McLaren, Ford, Ferrari, GM, Renault but doesn't mean they will field cars.

[chernaudi]

VAG attending might be a sign that Dieselgate had relatively little to do with them pulling out Audi Sport and Porsche, and that it was ROI related. And cost reduction is supposed to be a feature of the new regs (hopefully). I'd hope that maybe Audi Sport or Lamborghini might get involved, but that's far from a foregone conclusion, and is pretty much just rumor and speculation.

Mind you, Porsche did attend F1 technical meetings, and nothing of note came of that, either. I believe that Aston Martin Racing also attended some of those meetings, and the only thing that came out of that is an AMR sponsorship/endorsement tie-in with Red Bull Racing.

[carbsmith]

Originally Posted by Akrapovic

The Mazda 787B didn't have particularly good speed, despite the huge weight advantage.

You have to look at things a little closer. The Jags had clean races in '91, which would have put Mazda like 10 laps back in 1990. But Mazda had straight up better race pace than the fuel, tire, and brake conserving, coasting, overloaded Jaguars in 1991.

Weight hurts you more with fuel consumption rules in effect and has a lot of extra impact over a long race compared to a single lap.

[TF110]

Originally Posted by Akrapovic

The Mazda 787B didn't have particularly good speed, despite the huge weight advantage. It qualified badly and took advantage of poor reliability of the other cars. Unless the new BoP mandates car failures, you won't end up with this sort of situation.

The reasons why you can't just ballast up the Toyota have already been gone over. See IMSA LMP2 v DP in traffic as to why weight does not undo torque when laptimes are equal.

Elephant in the room: Why are doing success ballast? So we can put weight on the Toyota. So why don't they just add the weight to the Toyota from round 1? The reason Toyota are fine with this is that it doesn't include Le Mans and because it'll take Toyota 5 races to accumulate the required amount of weight to give anyone else a sniff of a chance anyway. So the first few races will still be easy wins, it's just that by round 3 they'll be winning by 1 lap rather than 4 laps.

I don't really mind if they equalise the cars or not. But if they're going to do it, then stop arsing around with stupid half measures. This flip-flopping and half-arsed ideas are making the ACO look like absolute amateurs. Similar to the next generation rules. What are they? Nobody knows because they change every week.

The success ballast would be on top of the already reconfigured EOT. So there's a potential that Toyota may run at 900kg off the bat while ByKolles/Rebellion runs 815kg or something. So then it becomes they already weigh 900kg (904kg at the latest WEC races) and on top of that, the hybrid gets reduced if they can't add anymore ballast, or it's maxed out (like in Super GT). If you watch Super GT at all, it's not too bad in GT500. The good teams are out front regardless of the weight, but then sometimes the midfield teams get to shine at a later race because the weight isn't on, but they don't just dominate and neither does the weight make the good teams absolutely noncompetitive.

[Akrapovic]

SuperGT does a fantastic job, but it isn't dealing with 2 different rule sets - which is what the ACO is currently trying to do. Before the current BoPing, the LMP1P teams were 6 seconds off the works cars at best, and 10 seconds off regularly (at Le Mans obviously, not regular length tracks lol).

Unlike SuperGT, the cars achieve their laptimes in completely different ways. SuperGT has the fine details as well of course, but there isn't a huge differential to close up. We watched IMSA struggle with this exact situation before - but the current LMP1 situation is even worse because the car with the inherent advantage in how it achieves its speed also has all the advantages a factory team has.

Again, I'm not saying they should be balanced. Toyota is the better car. It's legal. It's the only car left in its class. It should win. But this pathetic attempted at balancing is ridiculous - the length of time that it's taking to make these decisions (which don't make a difference anyway - for the reasons already posted) only add to the embarrassment of the situation.

Either do not do it or do it properly. The current solution and proposed solution do not achieve anything other than a lot of talking and argument and the exact same result as before.

[deggis]

https://sportscar365.com/lemans/wec/...ully-finished/

Toyota: Hypercar Process “Still not Fully Finished”

An announcement is expected from the ACO during its annual press conference on June 14.

“[The meeting] was for us to say, OK, now we do with this information,” said Leupen.

“But still, there has to be a final stamp on it. This is what we will know on June 14, maybe a bit before. We will then follow up with our press conference a few hours later, and then we can make our stance.

“At least now we can make some steps, but we now need to get the final one. From our point of view, it’s a situation where we got some clear views on what we could do. But still it’s not fully finished.”

[RedSquirrel]

Why don't they ACO just make Toyota remove the front motor next season? And allow them to regen at 400 kW instead of 300 kW on the rear axle to compensate for the loss of an MGU-K.

[carbsmith]

In IMSA the DP thing had such a massive effect on results because of the sporting regulations and tracks. Not to mention the DPs also had the top end advantage which is really not the case for LMP1. Without completely awful spec tires, constant safety cars, the specific way they did restarts, and so many tight point and squirt tracks there wouldn't have been such an advantage. You'd see an LMP2 clearly controlling a race then get mugged on a 10 minute final run on frigid tires and have zero means of repassing without a pick once finally up to speed.

They hardly made history's greatest effort to balance those cars anyways.

[TF110]

I remember those lmp2s a decade ago or so in alms, they were 750-780kg vs Audi at 900-930kg. The hp difference was a little less than what there is now when Toyota uses the hybrid but it was at least 100+hp in Audi's favor. I think the tracks they run on are definitely more suited to the lighter lmp2's than the heavier R10. You also have to consider that the Toyota has a much better suspension than these private lmp1s. This was spoke about by the ACO in a dsc interview concerning Sebring and the bumps. There's not much more that they can do besides cut down on the hybrid power of Toyota or the private lmp1s get more development done and better front tires.

[Akrapovic]

You could literally GIVE the privateer teams a Toyota TS050 and they still wouldn't win. You have to give them BETTER than the works team, since the works team has all the advantages of massive amounts of personal, simulator work, constant engineering refinement, factory drivers, and everything that comes with being a works team.

[carbsmith]

That's not quite fair, Rebellion this year has significant ORECA assistance and at least one car with factory drivers. You don't have to be outright better, just within the margin where if you have a perfect day and they have a crappy day the windows cross over.

[Akrapovic]

ORECA Assistance isn't quite up with Toyota, and for sure the Toyota #1 driver line-up is impressive (And the #3 ain't shabby), but again that isn't quite up there with the Toyotas.

You're absolutely spot-on about being close. But that's what it'd take for a privateer to be close enough to snatch a result - you'd have to give them a works car and more support than they currently have.

[Maelochs]

Originally Posted by Akrapovic

I don't really mind if they equalise the cars or not. But if they're going to do it, then stop arsing around with stupid half measures. This flip-flopping and half-arsed ideas are making the ACO look like absolute amateurs. Similar to the next generation rules. What are they? Nobody knows because they change every week.

For whatever reason, FIA-ACO does not Want to equalize the LMP-1 classes. If it wanted to it simply would. Toyota will win Le Mans, and win another world title, and that is what both Toyota and the organizers agreed to—P1-H will be faster.

The half-measures are a feeble attempt to look like they want fairness … no one is fooled. The fix went in in 2015.

I find FIA-ACO has really embarrassed itself with this whole one-team Super Season, and with its completely non-competitive Le Mans. By courting the factories exclusively and then draining them, FIA-ACO has made a mockery of WEC and Le Mans.

The light Should have gone off after Peugeot pulled out—and when Toyota agreed to come on board early, FIA should have seen that as a reprieve and a chance to rethink the new rules.

Instead they went for the most expensive options possible, froze out the privateers, and ignored the business realities of racing.

And the rules which will be announced in a few days … who knows? But whatever … plenty of time for factories to create vehicles in time for 2021. How hard can it be? What is the perfect blend of arrogance and ignorance? FIA-ACO.

Originally Posted by chernaudi

VAG attending might be a sign that Dieselgate had relatively little to do with them pulling out Audi Sport and Porsche, and that it was ROI related.

FIA–ACO Should have realized that VAG used dieselgate as an excuse, and was really leaving because the cost of playing wasn’t worth the prize. Instead, FIA-ACO continued to assume that Le Mans was so alluring that manufacturers would do anything FIA wanted just to get to race there.

Now we have now---Toyota will win Le Mans by Not racing, but going as slowly as it can to stay ahead of the privateers so its cars will last and cross the line 1-2, having never been challenged.

What a travesty—the Toyotas will win by going slowly, because they already have so huge an advantage because of the rules, there is simply no one with which they might compete.

A couple more Le Mans 24s like this, and the race will return to obscurity. Where is the next GTP/Group C formula which actually allows auto racing teams to afford to compete in auto racing? Not holding my breath.

[chernaudi]

Next rules that will allow teams to compete on an affordable and theoretically level playing field from the ACO and the FIA? At this rate, my chances of winning the lottery and marrying Victoria Justice are better than the odds of that happening.

Seeing and reading some of the goings on with the WEC and who and how the show's being run, I'm starting to simply think that there's too many cooks in the kitchen and too many conflicting ideas. Either everyone needs to get on the same page ASAP, or someone's gotta go.

Right now, OEMs and factory teams have too much power, and there's a power vacuum as far as the ACO and FIA are concerned. Mind you, I think that car makers should have some say as far as the rules, but if you're gonna go that route, let the private teams have their say, too.

In short, just make a set of rules that make sense to everyone to some degree, and stick with it.

[TF110]

Toyota is faster because it's a Toyota and not an Oreca Gibson or BR1 Dallara AER. Just like Audi and Peugeot and Porsche and most other manufacturer lmp1's, they have the resources to do more with their car than the private teams. If you gave Toyota 680+hp/830kg it would be faster than it is now. Major factors at play are the suspension, the setup, the team, the factory and the development. There's only so much the rules can do unless they outright take away from Toyota their hybrid power or it's activation.

It looks like thats going to be on the table for next season. I think they'll ballast Toyota and reduce the amount of power from the hybrid or maybe even make them wait until 100/120kmh to deploy it.

[chernaudi]

And that's somewhat of the problem. Is it just that Toyota are an OEM with a bespoke car, or is it hybrid, or both? And if both, which outweighs the other?

Best thing that the ACO can maybe do right now is restrict the AWD portion of the hybrid on the Toyota like they did with Audi in '12 and '13.