F1 comparisons let the WEC down

The World Endurance Championship is, by any measure, on an upward curve.

Saturday's Spa 6 Hours attracted a crowd of more than 50,000, up 8000 on the 2014 running of the event. With Nissan about to join the fray to make it four works marques in LMP1, interest is demonstrably increasing among manufacturers as well.

The Spa race was a great one, a close battle between Audi and Porsche, with an eventual winning margin of only 13 seconds in an event uninterrupted by safety cars. By the standards of endurance racing, that's spectacularly close.

But there is one dangerous limiting factor that proponents of WEC must be wary of: the tiresome comparisons with Formula 1 made by certain tribalistic factions.

With increasing regularity, declarations are made that vast swathes of 'the fans' are forsaking F1 and turning to WEC. That's simply not true.

This isn't a defence of F1, which has its own problems and which is, in many territories, suffering from declining viewing figures. Instead, it's a warning of the dangers of WEC being seen as nothing more than a stick to beat grand prix racing with.

The Spa WEC round was another close affair, with Audi winning by a dozen seconds © LAT

If all those who claim to watch WEC religiously really did so, the TV ratings would be higher and stories about the category on this website would attract more hits.

It's rather like the disparity between those who claim they value local and regional news broadcasts and newspapers at the same time as never watching or reading them.

WEC has become the hipster motorsport category of choice. For those actually following it closely, that's great. It's those who would co-opt it for their own agendas without actually engaging with it that pose a threat.

Having attended the Silverstone race earlier this year and watched all six hours of Spa at the weekend (and with a trip to the Le Mans 24 Hours on the agenda), I enjoy WEC enormously. Based on the Porsche v Audi battles that we've seen so far, 2015 might prove to be one of the true epics of sportscar racing.

But the idea that, great as this is, WEC can somehow have true mass appeal is nonsensical. You simply will not get millions of viewers glued to the screen for that long, especially when an in-depth understanding of the race requires them to be fully engaged, scrutinising the live timing.

Of course, you could tinker with the format to try to make it easier to follow - shorter races perhaps? But this would represent a catastrophic undermining of the whole ethos and appeal of WEC. Endurance racing at its best offers epic scope thanks to the range of the ebb and flow throughout a race. Compromising that would be lunacy.

Porsche and Audi also duked it out for victory at the Silverstone opener © XPB

It will always be a category that rewards the dedicated follower, rather than wide exposure. And wide exposure isn't necessarily a good thing.

After all, if a grand prix stagnates for 10 laps, there are howls of derision about how 'dull' it has got. There are stages in six-hour races where there isn't much going on that the casual viewer can relate to.

Ultimately, it's the appeal to the casual viewer that draws in the millions. It's why F1 gained such a strong foothold in the first place given that in so many countries - and in the UK in particular - it was privileged to hold a very visible slot in the Sunday-afternoon schedules that drew in more and more fans, and was a suitable length to keep those watching engaged.

Let's say WEC magically did get F1 levels of following, doubtless it would be polluted with the usual low-quality public debate.

Take the Silverstone round as an example; were F1 to have a tight finish as a result of a penalty for the leader issued for exceeding track limits while lapping traffic, many would deride it as 'artificial' (a tiresome, lazy term of criticism).

As for the battle between the Audi and Porsche in that race, where the former passed the latter several times before being blasted back past on the straight - surely in the world of F1 that would be derided as an uneven fight, with one car simply powering past the other?

Would Porsche's power advantage be derided if it was competing in Formula 1? © LAT

That doesn't mean those criticisms should have been directed towards WEC, merely that F1 exists in a strange world where criticism is inevitable - just twisted to suit the circumstances.

In the 15 runnings of the Le Mans 24 Hours from 2000-14, an Audi has won 13 times. Only the Peugeot's victory in 2009 can genuinely be seen as a defeat given that, in 2003, the Volkswagen Group focused on the Bentley project, which was supported by crew who had been part of the Audi domination prior to that.

The hardcore sportscar fanbase can see that for the extraordinary achievement it is. Why would you want to change that?

In fact, there are serious lessons F1 can learn from WEC, which knows how to constantly talk itself up. After all, in WEC, every driver is driving at 100 per cent every lap.

Well... except when they lift and coast (listen when watching onboard cameras for this). Or when they're saving tyres: one of the keys to Audi's win at Spa was Benoit Treluyer's quite brilliant final stint on well-worn rubber.

If you think that Treluyer could simply go out, cane the tyres and not have to factor in how hard he punished them, you do his skills as a driver a serious disservice. While WEC is free of the high-degradation rubber that's used in F1, degradation and wear is a factor.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with these being key components of any form of motorsport, but to pretend they don't exist in endurance racing is simply incorrect.

The dominance of Mercedes in Formula 1 is often criticised © LAT

Then there are the inaccurate comparisons of laptimes thrown around. Here, I'm going to let verifiable facts do the talking by comparing the pace at the two WEC rounds to date with last year's F1 performance. Again, this is an area where misleading comparisons have been made.

The fastest lap at the British GP weekend last year was a 1m34.508s, set by Lewis Hamilton in Friday afternoon practice before rain hit on Saturday.

The quickest in qualifying for the WEC round was Brendon Hartley's 1m39.534s (the official pole position time was 1m39.721s because this is an average of the pace set by two drivers).

That would be good enough to have outpaced one car in FP2 - Marcus Ericsson's Caterham. Had F1 qualifying been dry, it would have left Hartley's time nestled neatly between the F1 field and the GP2 grid (Raffaele Marciello bagged pole position last year with a 1m40.445s).

Spa presents a similar story.

Silverstone best laptime comparison: WEC 2015 v F1/GP2 2014

Formula 1: 1m34.508s (Lewis Hamilton, FP2)

WEC: 1m39.534s (Brendon Hartley, qualifying)

GP2: 1m40.445s (Raffaele Marciello, qualifying)

Spa best laptime comparison: WEC 2015 v F1/GP2 2014

Formula 1: 1m49.189s (Lewis Hamilton, FP2)

WEC: 1m54.755s (Timo Bernhard, qualifying)

GP2: 1m56.839s (Stoffel Vandoorne, qualifying)

Also, contrary to what many claim, Andre Lotterer did not, in fact, go slower in the Caterham F1 car than the WEC pace. His fastest F1 lap at Spa last year was a 1m54.093s, set in FP2. That's over six-tenths faster than Bernhard's best time in qualifying in 2015.

The above numbers are used not as a justification to F1, but to counter the badly-assembled, lazy and oft-repeated 'facts' presented about the relative pace of LMP1 cars and F1 cars. Don't take my word for it, take the time to check them yourself...

WEC has drivers of Bruni's calibre outside of the top-tier LMP1 entries © LAT

Personally, I don't care about pace comparison. F1, WEC and GP2 cars are all damned fast by any measure. But many people do seem to care, and it's tiresome to see inaccurate claims being made and repeated.

This is, in many ways, the definition of tribalism. A bit like certain political parties, WEC has become the go-to place for those who don't like F1, co-opted as a flag to pin dissatisfaction to rather than to support.

But unlike some of those parties, WEC is genuinely a superb category, to be enjoyed on its own merits.

It has some outstanding drivers. The addition of an extra Porsche and Audi at Spa meant that there were 24 genuine top-line professionals competing (well, 23 once Kazuki Nakajima eliminated himself) in the factory LMP1 cars.

There are also professional drivers dotted around the other classes, drivers of the calibre of Gianmaria Bruni, meaning that WEC sustains far more genuine paid drivers than F1 does.

Mark Webber, when at his best in F1, was a driver capable of fighting for the world championship. And as he showed last year, you can't simply stroll into sportscars and win.

There is greater freedom in the regulations, although the claim that the LMP1 cars are dramatically different from one another is questionable. With the exception of the attention-seeking front-engined Nissan GT-R LM Nismo, which will make its first public on-track appearance at the Le Mans test day at the end of the month, the cars aren't actually that different visually.

Celebration of Kristensen's achievements typical of WEC mentality © LAT

There is far greater variety in the powerplants, with some great technology being deployed. That much is inarguable, and is one of the key appeals to the manufacturers that participate.

Perhaps the most delightful thing about sportscar racing is that success is lauded rather than whined about. Audi has won 13 of the last 15 Le Mans 24 Hours - and one of those 'defeats' hardly counts given the aforementioned Bentley project in 2003.

Given that Mercedes winning for a second year in a row has lead to whining in F1, imagine what kind of reaction there would be to 15 years of dominance...

In WEC, it's also great to see drivers recognised. I don't hear many people complaining about Tom Kristensen 'having it easy' given he was often in the best car, and almost always with the best team, while taking seven of his record nine Le Mans wins in Audi kit (and another in the Bentley).

So those who want to continue to extol the virtues of WEC - and you should because it's a fantastic series - try doing it by emphasising its merits rather than denigrating the more popular F1.

And for those behind WEC, don't get drawn into trying to take F1 on. You have a wonderful, unique championship that is one of the best shows in town for the hardcore motorsport enthusiast.

It would be great to live in a world with enough dedicated motorsport fans to make WEC a genuinely mass-market product, but realistically that isn't going to be the case given its nuanced nature. And that's not a bad thing.

Enjoy it for what it is, rather than using it to attack F1.