LeMans 2018

I believe Toyota and the ACO have been having long conversations about the 2020 ruleset - just found this surfing from work

toyota hypercar concept

T.J. said:

In reply to Adrian_Thompson :

Interesting on the diffuser. That makes sense.

The Ferraris and the Fords look the closest to the actual road cars they are based on to my eye. I loved seeing how much lower the Ford was when it was tucked up on the rear of one of the 911s.

I understand the desire to have some sort of BOP system in place, otherwise things just get too crazy and the costs spiral up until most everybody is driven out of the sport. The problem is that it leads to sandbagging during practice and qualli to try to game the system and that it hard to get things properly balanced. I figure every year there will be a car that has a BOP advantage and the other cars are just competing for 2nd place or hoping for a mistake from the chosen one.

NASA uses, or is getting ready to start using, GPS monitoring on cars and watching acceleration so cars (mainly turbo) can't have a "dyno legal" tune, then switch to a higher power tune during the race or qualifying.

And this is regional level racing in North America.

z31maniac said:

T.J. said:

In reply to Adrian_Thompson :

Interesting on the diffuser. That makes sense.

The Ferraris and the Fords look the closest to the actual road cars they are based on to my eye. I loved seeing how much lower the Ford was when it was tucked up on the rear of one of the 911s.

I understand the desire to have some sort of BOP system in place, otherwise things just get too crazy and the costs spiral up until most everybody is driven out of the sport. The problem is that it leads to sandbagging during practice and qualli to try to game the system and that it hard to get things properly balanced. I figure every year there will be a car that has a BOP advantage and the other cars are just competing for 2nd place or hoping for a mistake from the chosen one.

NASA uses, or is getting ready to start using, GPS monitoring on cars and watching acceleration so cars (mainly turbo) can't have a "dyno legal" tune, then switch to a higher power tune during the race or qualifying.

And this is regional level racing in North America.

IMSA and the ACO require teams to provide ecu data so that these sorts of things can be investigated/controlled. The Turbo cars get a boost limit while the normally aspirated cars get inlet restrictor(s) to limit the total power output. This was put in place after cars were noticeably faster in the 2017 Daytona 24hr than the Roar before the 24 (which was used to set the BOP).

Way back in 2007 the restrictors on the car I worked on were changed several times starting at 27.1mm down to 25.7mm by the end of the year. The series did not understand that we were still making massive torque through the entire range of rpm and the advantage was the traction control system I worked out. The drivers barely even knew it was there and we could double stint tires while competitors could not. That saved us time in the pits since the regs would not allow fueling and tire changes at the same time.

In reply to stafford1500 :

Interesting info - thanks for posting.

With the new hypercar era coming which seems to be designed to push the privateers out of LMP1, I am going to root for Rebellion to somehow get a win next year. They were able to set purple times in sector 1, but Toyota stomped them in S2 and S3. If they could at least get the rules changed so they could be on equal stint lengths as the Toyotas, that would at least give them a chance.

In reply to T.J. :

First there is not hyper car formula coming.  This isn't' the GT1 of the late 90's.  It will still pure LMP1 race machines underneath.  Nothing related in any way to any road cars.  The bodywork only will have styling  cues that links to manufacturers products.  Ford Merc, Ferrari, McLaren etc. that may be their Super or Hyper cars.  For Ford it may be the GT.  For others it would be whatever they feel works, probably corporate grills etc.  Think more GTP Corvette and Mustang than Merc CLS or Porsche GT1.  Also they say they specifically want the smaller manufactures like Ginetta, TVR etc. to be able to compete.  They are also talking massively smaller (by WEC standards) budgets, like 25-35mil Euro.  They are talking (but no decision yet) about off the shelf hybrid systems that will be affordable to smaller operations.  Finally, having spent the whole year claiming to play nice with IMSA, what they have rolled out is still beyond even the biggest current IMSA teams.  It's rumored that the Acura and Cadillac teams are operating on well below $20m total.  BTW, rumored budgets for Porsche and Toyota were over $200mil over 3-4 years in WEC

Here's an insight on the proposed changes and its impact on IMSA:

https://racer.com/2018/06/15/insight-where-does-the-aco-fias-new-prototype-concept-leave-dpi/

https://racer.com/2018/06/20/dpi-manufacturers-react-to-aco-wec-rule-proposals/

I was thinking it was the requirement to have hybrid cars that was going to drive out the little guys, but if they can buy a spec hybrid system, then maybe I can still root for Rebellion to get an overall win someday. Any idea what the LMP1 privateer current budgets are compared to 25-35mil euros?

Adrian_Thompson said:

In reply to T.J. :

First there is not hyper car formula coming.  This isn't' the GT1 of the late 90's.  It will still pure LMP1 race machines underneath.  Nothing related in any way to any road cars.  The bodywork only will have styling  cues that links to manufacturers products.  Ford Merc, Ferrari, McLaren etc. that may be their Super or Hyper cars.  For Ford it may be the GT.  For others it would be whatever they feel works, probably corporate grills etc.  Think more GTP Corvette and Mustang than Merc CLS or Porsche GT1.  Also they say they specifically want the smaller manufactures like Ginetta, TVR etc. to be able to compete.  They are also talking massively smaller (by WEC standards) budgets, like 25-35mil Euro.  They are talking (but no decision yet) about off the shelf hybrid systems that will be affordable to smaller operations.  Finally, having spent the whole year claiming to play nice with IMSA, what they have rolled out is still beyond even the biggest current IMSA teams.  It's rumored that the Acura and Cadillac teams are operating on well below $20m total.  BTW, rumored budgets for Porsche and Toyota were over $200mil over 3-4 years in WEC

Don’t confuse “hypercar” fast road cars with the ACO’s decision to brand the next generation of LMP1s as “Hypercars”. 

In reply to Keith Tanner :

I am curious where GTP or whatever they are going to call it will leave LMP2. The P2 cars aren't that far off the privateer P1 pace as is.