From The Editor’s Desk – January 2023 – Why the WEC’s Bending to IMSA Will Make The New Season Incredible.

Thirteen, that is the number of Hypercars and Grand Touring Prototype (GTP) cars that will be lined up along the first six and a half rows of the grid in the twelfth season of the World Endurance Championship. 2 Toyota GR010s, 2 Peugeot 9X8s, 2 Ferrari 499Ps, 1 Glickenhaus SCG007 and the triumphant return of ByKolles running the new Vanwall Vandervell 680, make up the WEC’s home-brewed Hypercar ruleset, with 4 Porsche 963s and 1 Cadillac V-LMDh joining from the North American IMSA governing body’s GTP class make the largest top-flight grid ever seen in the WEC.

What makes it even better, is that the cars will be closely balanced together with 7 different engines, ranging from the Peugeot’s tiny 2.6 litre V6 to Caddy’s 5.5 litre naturally aspirated V8. Some cars, namely the ByKolles and Glickenhaus, will run on purely fossil fuels, the GTP cars will have their “off the shelf” system created together by Bosch, Williams Advanced Engineering and Xtrac, whereas the purebred Hypercars from Toyota, Ferrari and Peugeot can develop what they like.

The last time “Le Mans” racing had as big and varied a grid as we’re going to see in 2023, back in 1998, cars were also being developed from different rulebooks, but only internal combustion engines saw qualifying gaps at La Sarthe approaching 22 seconds a lap from the works Mercedes to the 29th placed privately run Kremer K8 Spyder, but even to the works Nissans the gap was 5 seconds. In 2023, I would be surprised if any of the cars are outside of that time. And with BMW, Alpine, Lamborghini and potentially Acura joining from the GTP ruleset and another privateer, Isotta, potentially joining at Monza this year, and De Tomaso in 2024, the new golden age of sports car racing really does look like it is finally here.

But, there were big sacrifices to get here.

The slow fall of LMP1 was witnessed by the entire motorsport world over the last five or so years. Since Audi and Porsche pulled the plug after the ‘dieselgate’ scandal and Toyota was left alone as the only works team, deliberately fighting with one hand behind their back to keep the appearance of a fair fight going against the private teams, it was clear something was needed and the FIA and ACO, owners of the WEC, brought the bold vision of the Hypercar class. A very road car-based concept, similar to the controversial mid-90s period, gave the prospect of Ferrari, Bugatti, Aston Martin, McLaren, Porsche, and maybe boutique manufacturers like Glickenhaus, Pagani and Koenigsegg to the racing table. But there was a problem… cost.

Back in 2018 when the first posters were shown and rough details were discussed, the big push was for ‘production-based powertrains’ with a minimum of 25 real road cars sold by the end of an entrant's first season. This was a slap in the face to all the racing team privateers who had kept the WEC going and an incredible expense to the manufacturers, especially to marques like Peugeot who said at the time they had no intention of ever building a road-going Hypercar.

With the fact LMP1 died off largely due to the high expense, it was an impossible concept for the WEC to try and push for. What’s more, it was also completely the opposite of what IMSA, the WEC’s equivalent in the United States had been heading towards with its DPI programme of LMP2 “stock” based chassis which had been tarted up with manufacturer-style bodywork, but with bespoke engines. The FIA and IMSA had already been courting each other to rejoin forces to allow one another’s teams to race in the other’s big races, Le Mans 24hrs for the WEC and Daytona 24hrs for IMSA. Things had to change.

A year went by, then two, Aston Martin was initially all-in on Hypercar with their new Valkyrie, developed with Red Bull Racing, but when the Stroll family bought the marque, they subsequently crushed not only the Valkyrie racing programme, but also Aston Martin’s works racing involvement in the WEC. This meant that the WEC’s hand was now even weaker than before, so, through a lot of negotiations, they relented. And, as a fan of sports car racing since 2007, this was the best decision the WEC has made since its inception. It removed the need for road cars. There were also concessions made to IMSA to allow their second-generation LMDh cars (now GTP) to join the WEC and be balanced against the Hypercars who would also be run, under one unified banner.

From here, the starter’s gun had been fired. Peugeot almost immediately revealed a tie-up with Rebellion Racing, then, even when the long-running privateer team decided to quit motorsport, Peugeot decided to go alone, and we saw the 9X8 at Monza in 2022. Glickenhaus were already underway in building their SCG007, but they were able to change and evolve it more freely, releasing their limited resources by dropping the road car need, and they joined at the start of Hypercar in 2021. ByKolles, the smallest team on the grid, were hit by delays from suppliers as the COVID-19 pandemic gripped Europe, but, slowly but surely, their new car, the Vanwall also finally appeared and after initially being rejected by the WEC, after a year of testing, will finally join the grid in 2023.

But, of course, the big catch was Ferrari. Back as a works manufacturer for the first time in 50 years, the AF-Corsa run 499P, born, essentially from the change Ferrari had from F1’s budget cap, the car which will also debut in 2023 is the first Ferrari prototype since the legendarily successful 333 SP. It means that the Hypercar class now actually out-numbers the marques on IMSA’s GTP list, something we at Stelvio Automotive were worried about only a couple of years ago.

There still is the opportunity for something like a Mercedes backed Pagani effort, or McLaren, or NISSAN (probably not) but even if the WEC hadn’t allowed the IMSA cars over, the WEC grid in 2023 could be as high as 9 or 10 cars, which in itself would have seen it back to its record entrant level. The bonus is that we aren’t getting any copies from IMSA either. When Audi and Porsche both announced they were going to create GTP cars with the same chassis and engine, there was outrage at the lazy, badge engineering. But as Audi dropped out to pursue F1, it now leaves the Porsche 963 as, for now, the only Multimatic chassis, so it’s no less a works car than the 333 SP was back in the 90s. Cadillac have a Dallara chassis under them, which is the same as the BMW which is not joining the WEC this year, but, fortunately, the cars look so different and have such completely different engines I would struggle to call them cousins if I didn’t know better. I wish the Acura (Honda, Oreca chassis) were coming to the WEC, but there is little marketing reasoning for them to, but the Alpine (also Oreca) and Lamborghini (Ligier) coming next year will more than make up for it.

And to that, I just need to say thank you. Thank you WEC for, for once, swallowing your pride and taking one for the team.

If this year goes to plan, and you don’t screw over the small teams, you could have a Hypercar/GTP class of, count them, (Ferrari (2), Toyota (4), Peugeot (6), Glickenhaus and Vanwall (8), Isotta and De Tomaso (10), Porsche (14), Cadillac and Alpine (16), BMW and Lamborghini (18-20) total cars, something unseen this century… Sports car racing is back, and it feels so good!