2023 WEC

Bykolles is a big disappointment. They have never been very good, but I was ill hoping they wouldn't' be fighting with the P2 cars again.

With the Toyotas a second clear, a BOP adjustment might be a good thing. Still, a second is not so far off as to be an utter disaster. They can adjust that out, if they want to.
 
Compared to two years ago, which seemed hopeless, sportscar racing is in pretty good shape. We just need a few more cars and a little less disparity. More cars are coming. We'll see what they do about the disparity.
 
Lone Cadillac was narrowly quickest over the GR010s in the PM session.

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Uh, oh. We could actually see a race break out next week. Caddy, Toyota, Ferrari and Porsche all within a 1/2 second or so, and one of the Peugeots are within a second too.

Anyone seen any video?
 
Dumb question time : Are the IMSA GTP's equal to the WEC Hypercar's ?
If not , whats the primary difference?
 
Hotrod said:
Dumb question time : Are the IMSA GTP's equal to the WEC Hypercar's ?
If not , whats the primary difference?
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Yeah, different name for the same class. IMSA just doesn’t have any of the LMH entrants like Toyota/Ferrari/Peugeot/Glick yet. Only cars from the LMDh regs so far.
 
Things started to bunch together in the Sunday AM session. The Vanwall managed to leapfrog the P2s and is about half a second adrift of the tail of Hypercars now. Peugeot found pace overnight. The #51 Ferrari wrecked on cold tires out of the pits and didn’t log any laps.

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Thing I’ve noticed looking at individual driver times is that ByKolles absolutely need to get Jacques Villeneuve out of that Vanwall. All three sessions so far he’s been slower than every single P2 driver, and four or five seconds slower than his teammates. Dangerous. You gotta know when to hang it up.
 
Jacques has one more day to show some speed. If he's that slow the team might look for another driver. I don't know that it matters either way considering the car is not that good.

Most drivers are notorious for hanging on too long.
 
Toyota has 1/2 second on the field, but the entire Hypercar grid is covered by (excluding the Glick) 1.565, so that's an improvement across the board. We'll see who stands where in qualifying, but at least we've got a reasonably tight field.

The big surprise was how much speed Vanwall found, They carved it down from 4 or 5 seconds to 1.5 or so and that's massive. Slightly less surprising is Glick at 2.7 back, but that is still a big improvement.

All we can do is speculate because it's just a test, but it's good news things look so competitive....for now anyway.

 
Sunday PM session…I’m pretty confident Glickenhaus have more pace than they’re showing. Toyota and Cadillac seem pretty consistent across the day, everyone else seemed to lose pace in the afternoon. Same Pug that wrecked yesterday had a technical issue and lost laps again.

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FLRacingFan said:
Yeah, different name for the same class. IMSA just doesn’t have any of the LMH entrants like Toyota/Ferrari/Peugeot/Glick yet. Only cars from the LMDh regs so far.
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With that reported $35 million budget, we probably won't see a lot of hypercars here. GTPs are already insanely expensive enough. Maybe we could see Ferrari in IMSA, and maybe Peugeot can race under the Dodge name, but neither Glick nor Vanwall produce enough road cars to quality for IMSA.

So far they have done a reasonable job of BOPing everything. I was concerned that the BOP would favor the hypercars too much, and in the case of Toyota they did, just not as bad as I was expecting. It's at around 1/2 second now, which is far closer than they had it two years ago when everyone else got fed up and left. It's also close enough they could make a small tweak and put everyone on the same plane, or at least closer.

We've waited 50 years for this kind of convergence to happen, and while after all that time patience is short, we won't have to wait much longer to get everything we have been screaming for. It's a good time to be optimistic.
 
Jacques has found pace, but he's still well behind.
 

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The latest rumor is Sebring will swap out for COTA and Portimão for Interlagos in 2024. I’d love to see an Interlagos return but I don’t remember seeing anyone show up to the COTA races of the past. 🤷‍♂️

 
Round 3 at Spa will see a second CGR Cadillac and the debut of the Hertz JOTA Porsche, for an increase to 13 Hypercar entries.

 
13 entries is getting closer to an acceptable grid. Last year we were almost happy with just 2 cars, simply because they always had a good race. Seeing a big field on Friday at the WEC, and then another big field just the next days was simply surreal.

I was not aware Ganassi was going to run a second car, but that is certainly good news. Jota's car looks awesome. That new Assetto car looks really sweet too. Alpine is coming back. Ferrari has also made no comment on customer cars, but you know they would sell if available. Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe Proton is going to run a (or maybe even two) 963 also. That, and realistically, there's got to be people on the waiting list for another Porsche. Either way, it looks like there are going to be a lot more Porsches than anything else, but that's nothing new in sportscar racing.

That, and we also don't know who is planning to build or buy a car. In the DPI era Cadillac coughed up cars for almost anyone who needed one, so we might see a few more of those. My guess is we already know all the manufacturers that are coming, so any surprise entries from this point on will probably be privateers. This is a good thing because not only do we need them to fill the field now, but we will also definitely need them when the factories eventually and inevitably go home.

The last piece of this puzzle could possibly be Ford. They have their Red Bull deal, and maybe that's enough for them, but I think we would all love to see them hand Ferrari their ass again.

In a world at war, and close to economic collapse, recovering from a deadly pandemic and run by a quad of psychopathic sociopaths, it's amazing sportscar racing is even remotely healthy, or even exists at all. Everything happening in world events is really bad news for sportscar racing (as well as the rest of us), but it's thriving and growing anyway. Hopefully the IMSA/ACO alliance is too strong to fail.
 
FLRacingFan said:
The latest rumor is Sebring will swap out for COTA and Portimão for Interlagos in 2024.
Click to expand...

I will be righteously p*ssed if they take Portimao off the schedule. It's bad enough we're losing Sebring. The other rumor I heard was Indianapolis is in the discussion to hose a race. I guess if we're not going to do Sebring, maybe WEC could share the weekend with IMSA. We need more of these war of the worlds kind of races.

FLRacingFan said:
I’d love to see an Interlagos return but I don’t remember seeing anyone show up to the COTA races of the past. 🤷‍♂️
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Cota is not much more than a parking lot with lines drawn to define the road. The nascar race last weekend was ridiculous because half the field ran off the road on the first turn every lap. If they took out all the asphalt run off, it might be a challenging circuit, but as it is, it's just a open parking lot.
 
Doc Austin said:
I will be righteously p*ssed if they take Portimao off the schedule. It's bad enough we're losing Sebring. The other rumor I heard was Indianapolis is in the discussion to hose a race. I guess if we're not going to do Sebring, maybe WEC could share the weekend with IMSA. We need more of these war of the worlds kind of races.


Cota is not much more than a parking lot with lines drawn to define the road. The nascar race last weekend was ridiculous because half the field ran off the road on the first turn every lap. If they took out all the asphalt run off, it might be a challenging circuit, but as it is, it's just an open parking lot.
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COTA had that one crazy race with the sudden downpour that turned the backstretch into a lake, I remember that one pretty well. It’s a track capable of good racing (see below) but people just didn’t show up, as you can see. I’m guessing this is a case where the teams and OEMs like the hospitality venues and pit garages more than anything else.

Portimão is good but also has pretty much no heritage or history on the calendar so it makes for an easy chop from the European slate to make for a needed return to South America. I think if they can expand to 9 rounds in a couple of years and rotate additional European venues like Portimão/Silverstone/Nürburgring it’d be a nice addition.

 
FLRacingFan said:
(COTA) It’s a track capable of good racing (see below) but people just didn’t show up, as you can see.
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Great circuits have consequence. I don't see much of that COTA. You can drive 50 feet off the surface and the worst that happens is your tires get dirty. I don't want it to be dangerous with trees lining the road or anything, but there should be more penalty for straight lining a corner than that.

FLRacingFan said:
Portimão is good but also has pretty much no heritage or history on the calendar so it makes for an easy chop from the European slate to make for a needed return to South America.
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Even heritage doesn't seem to matter much as evidenced by no Silverstone, no Dijon and many others. After all, it was 50 years of no world championship sportscar race at Daytona. WEC was in such bad shape they had to take what they could get, but now they are in a better position with such great field.

I think if they can expand to 9 rounds in a couple of years and rotate additional European venues like Portimão/Silverstone/Nürburgring it’d be a nice addition.
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While there are a lot of good circuits on the schedule, there's also some that belong there and aren't. Losing Sebring was a bad move, especially if they trade it for Indianapolis. I mean, Indy is great, but the road course is not very inspiring, and a ton less interesting than Sebring, Road America or Road Atlanta. We have a lot of great venues here and Indy is probably the least interesting choice.
 
Doc Austin said:
Great circuits have consequence. I don't see much of that COTA. You can drive 50 feet off the surface and the worst that happens is your tires get dirty. I don't want it to be dangerous with trees lining the road or anything, but there should be more penalty for straight lining a corner than that.
Click to expand...
Doc Austin said:
Even heritage doesn't seem to matter much as evidenced by no Silverstone, no Dijon and many others. After all, it was 50 years of no world championship sportscar race at Daytona. WEC was in such bad shape they had to take what they could get, but now they are in a better position with such great field.

While there are a lot of good circuits on the schedule, there's also some that belong there and aren't. Losing Sebring was a bad move, especially if they trade it for Indianapolis. I mean, Indy is great, but the road course is not very inspiring, and a ton less interesting than Sebring, Road America or Road Atlanta. We have a lot of great venues here and Indy is probably the least interesting choice.
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They tend to race at Grade 1 F1-standard tracks, so that’s no real surprise. Sebring and Le Mans are rare grandfathered-in exceptions to that. COTA is more technically challenging and has better racing than Indy so if that’s what we get, I’ll take it. I just won’t expect much fan turnout. It’s all about hospitality anyways. It’s quite possible it’ll be paired with IMSA again, so effectively resurrecting the whole Lone Star Le Mans event.

Dijon isn’t really in a state to hold major modern events I don’t think, and Silverstone has issues with BRDC management and a post-Brexit economy. WEC isn’t the only series that’s left there, and it was only just a few years ago the BRDC broke the contract with F1 over costs before coming to a new agreement at the 11th hour. There’s interest in going back but it’ll take a lot to overcome management there. I think if anything the Nürburgring is the event that has the most heritage that needs looking into bringing back next, about as much as the 6H/1000km races at Spa and Monza.
 
I have no idea how this one would’ve happened, but one of the Porsche Sprint Challenge Ibérica cars wound up in the stands somehow. Obviously very fortunate that it was just practice and no one was located there.

 
Another pretty dominant Toyota weekend so far, sweeping the front row for the race with Ferrari locking out the second row. The rest of the class - Porsche/Cadillac/Peugeot/Glickenhaus/Vanwall - were closer to the LMP2 pole time than they were to Toyota’s.

Race tomorrow 7 AM-1 PM ET
 
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