Ferrari to leave FIA WEC?

Argh, Blancpain sucks compared to WEC. If all this is about BOP I'm pretty sure that they can reach an agreement.

 

It's a great pity for endurance in general, but I am not surprised by the decision.

The ACO is really unpredictable in the way it manages the World Endurance Championship.

 

I don't agree with you here.

The Blancpain series isn't comparable to the WEC, of course, since it's mostly an European championship.

But it's a more open field with a variety of cars not seen in WEC, and a technical formula that provides good racing at a fraction of the cost. There is BOP too, but never so controversial.

The ACO is slowly killing GTE through legislation. In GTE the cars cost 3 times more than in GT3, on some tracks they are slower, and there is no market for the constructors.

It would make sense for the ACO to adopt GT3 rules; every body would be a winner.
The sooner, the better.

 

Agree in that GT2 (or GTE like ACO calls them) and GT3 should be merged. That would bring Mercedes, BMW, Lamborghini, McLaren and others to Le Mans.

Although their BOP usage is abusive too. Seeing a Bentley racing (and sometimes defeating) McLarens and Porsches is laughable.

 

The ACO sees the SRO {Stephan Ratel Organisation which runs Blancpain) as its big rival in endurance racing and doesn't want to share a common set of regulation with it. That's the bottom line.

Also, the ACO mostly sees its series (WEC, ALMS, ELMS) as prototypes championships first where the GTs are "field fillers", where the Blancpain series is solely dedicated to GTs.

In the ACO series, the number of GTs will be decreasing in future with LMP1 & 2, or LMP2 & 3 in greater number. The Blancpain series caters for up to 60 cars at some races, and spreads to national series in Europe (Britain, France, Germany, etc...).

I think the BOP in the Blancpain series is OK, it allows a large variety of cars to compete, which is the attraction, and it levels the potentials too. BOP is not arbitrary, but based on evaluation of power, weight, but also frontal area, CX, etc... in a complex equivalence formula difficult to explain, and creates less recrimination than in WEC.

Let's be fair, if there was no BOP at all, the field would only be composed of Ferrari 488, McLaren 650S and Lamborghini Gallardo !! Without some sort of restriction, they are the fastest GTs by design . So, that would eliminate plenty of interesting cars, and create a two tiers championship. I think it's good that Aston Martin, BMW M6, Mercedes GT and Bentley compete too, and even Morgan Aero, etc... The public wants to see these cars race too.

 

I doubt if the ACO will endorse GT3 in its championships (WEC, ALMS, ELMS), because it's used by a rival organisation as I previously explained.

As for LMP2 and LMP3 being the backbone of endurance racing, I hope not.
These are just specs series, where everyone runs the same chassis (choice of 2?) and the same engine!! Specs series suck... in world championships.

I think that will be a real turn off for the public at place like Le Mans. People come to see makes competing, not anonymous prototypes all the same with different graphics!!

Porsche against Toyota, or Nissan against Audi, or Ford against Ferrari, or Jaguar against Porsche, etc... that's what attracted the crowd.
OAK against ORECA, and ORECA against OAK doesn't ring the same, or does it?
Or, "what was the best engine at Le Mans this year?" "Well, Nissan, everybody had one, just like last year!!" What a joke that would be...

What the ACO has to do is to rewrite the rules for LMP1, allowing more technical freedom, more diversity, and some sort of equivalence between hybrid and non-hybrid cars. At present, only the super budget can compete, whereas 20 or 10 years ago, there were plenty of private teams in LMP1.
Peugeot suggested a weight break for non-hybrid cars, and a scale of weight limits for different engine capacities. Like it used to be!!!

The ACO (Le Mans) bent backwards to please Audi, and now they are left in the lurch.

 

The WEC says there was no BoP adjustment.

They say there was an adjustment to the reference atmospheric pressure, which should have affected all the turbo cars.

 

That really doesn´t make sence at all, does it?

Maybe SRO brings back the glory years of the BPR-Series, fingers crossed.

 

I think the BPR series bring painful memories for SRO.

Remember, the series collapsed because the manufacturers went too far and wanted to dictate to the organisers. In the end, the GT1 cars were just costly prototypes under a silhouette body that only factories could afford.

The present Blancpain series is tailored for privateers and independent teams, and is a resounding success for it

 

Of course, but it´s supposed to be a series for road cars. What´s the point if the road car that they use as a base for the race car is not relevant? It´s almost as silohuettes, Nascar or DTM: it looks like the road car, but nothing else.

In the old days if you didn´t have a road car suitable for racing you built one, or at least a limited series for homologation, and then we had some interesting road cars too.

 

The GT3 are closely based on road cars (with a minimum production quantity), but the fastest ones (Ferrari 488, McLaren 650S, Lamborghini Gallardo, etc...) are restricted to give some equivalence with the slower ones (Aston Martin, Corvette, Mercedes, Porsche 911).
The restrictors or weight penalty are calculated in function of the performance of the car.

The cars are very disparate: front engine, central engine, rear engine, flat-6 engine, V6, V8, V10, V12, cars from 3.6L to 6.3L, atmo engine, turbos, etc..., all racing in the same series.

If there was no BOP in GT3, probably one or 2 models of cars would dominate, and all the others would just go home. What would be the purpose of that?

Yes, some GT3 race cars are detuned compared to the street cars, but they also benefit from lower weight, and at the other end of the scale, some GT cars are allowed to be worked on to develop more than in their street version. It's to EQUALISE the performance.


I think that Amato Ferrari, the boss of AF Corse has indicated that he finds the Blancpain BOP fairer than the WEC BOP, so he will be switching part of his effort there in future. .

 

Not 100% correct, even better... more news to come soon. will be great

 

Full Factory support doesnt help if you get screwed by the ACO's BOP....

Ford has another budget than Ferrari plus its also Chip Ganassi who runs the team. Similar to the Ferrari approach but with triple Budget.

 

Good to hear...

 

Excuse me, but I think this is complete nonsense.

If turbo boost had to be adjusted to "real time" fluctuating atmospheric pressure, one can expect it will have to be changed several times during a 24h race, or between practice, qualification and the race!

The ACO doesn't know what to invent to make life more complicated.