Why GTE's future is a conundrum with no easy answers

Announced on Friday, IMSA's decision to replace the ailing GT Le Mans category with a new 'GTD Pro' class for GT3 cars came as no surprise. What was once a thriving arena for manufacturer competition is now down to a single full-time works entrant in the form of Corvette following the exits of Ford, Porsche and BMW (except for the Michelin Endurance Cup).

Yes, a third full-time car in the form of WeatherTech Racing's customer Porsche 911 RSR-19 was scrambled to at least prevent Corvette from merely having to race itself outside of the long-distance races, but the situation was clearly untenable. And IMSA deserves credit for taking a proactive approach instead of allowing GTLM to wither completely.

But, in an age of increasing collaboration between IMSA and the World Endurance Championship, a partnership that has already presented sportscar racing with the gift of LMDh, what happens on one side of the Atlantic increasingly has an influence on the other. And IMSA axing GTLM for 2022 in favour of an increasing reliance on cheaper, more accessible GT3 cars to fill its grids raises the inevitable question of what the WEC should do about its equivalent GTE Pro class, which is not exactly in rude health either.

There are two layers to this conundrum. The first is the future of GTE Pro itself, and whether a decision should be taken to scrap the class after 2021 or if it should be allowed to peter out naturally. The second is the future of GTE as a ruleset, something which will also have an impact on the European Le Mans Series as well as the WEC.

Starting with GTE Pro, Aston Martin's withdrawal over the winter leaves the class in a precarious position, with just four cars signed up for 2021: two factory entries each from Porsche and Ferrari. It's a far cry from the 10-car full-season grid we had for the 2018-19 superseason, which also featured Ford and BMW as well as Aston.

Clearly, whether the class survives beyond this season depends on the willingness of both of the last two marques standing to support it, potentially as a 'bridge' to the start of the LMDh era in 2023 that Porsche is already committed to being part of.

The other factor worth considering is the entry for the Le Mans 24 Hours. This year we can expect between six and eight cars in GTE Pro, depending on whether the Risi Competizione Ferrari and WeatherTech Proton Porsche join the two works Corvette C8.Rs in coming over from IMSA. Even with just the minimum of six cars, it wouldn't be the smallest class in the field; that honour would belong to the five-car Hypercar category.

For 2022, even assuming that Porsche and Ferrari stay, the question is whether Corvette would be willing to keep a couple of C8.Rs in GTE spec just to race at Le Mans. If the answer is no, then the class would become increasingly difficult to justify and would leave GTE Am with a lot of heavy lifting to do to keep the now-traditional 50/50 prototype-GT split.

There's an argument that GT3 should be gradually phased in to keep the WEC in lockstep with IMSA, but that would put the WEC, and indeed the ELMS, in direct competition with the likes of GT World Challenge Europe and the DTM in the fight for entries

In that scenario, it might be more expedient to switch to a three-class structure, with GTE Am renamed simply 'GTE' to sit underneath the Hypercar and LMP2 divisions. But this would only work as a short-term fix prior to the inevitable longer-term decline of the customer market for GTE cars, given dwindling manufacturer interest in the ruleset.

On the face of it, it would be foolish to meddle with GTE Am, comfortably the biggest class in this year's WEC with 13 cars set to contest the full season (up from 11 in 2019-20). And GTE cars, in both Pro and Am guises, outnumber prototypes on the entry list by 16-17.

But manufacturers are not going to continue building new GTE cars purely for customer racing if and when they wind down their factory programmes, as the market is nowhere near big enough to justify the investment needed to roll out a new design.

The current breed of cars can probably be kept in service a few more years, but eventually they won't be around any longer. And this is where it gets tricky.

There's an argument to say that GT3 should be gradually phased in as a long-term solution and to keep the WEC in lockstep with IMSA. And with a new GT3 homologation cycle commencing next year, it might seem like an ideal time to do so.

But that would put the WEC, and indeed the ELMS (which had eight full-season GTEs last year), in direct competition with the likes of GT World Challenge Europe, the DTM and even the Intercontinental GT Challenge in the fight for entries. And that's to say nothing of current GT3 teams potentially wanting to become LMDh customers in the future, which could leave all the above-named series squabbling for their share of a shrinking pool of entrants.

Another option would be to let GTE wither naturally and transition towards an all-prototype championship, potentially with LMP3 cars to bolster the grid. If LMDh really takes off and gives us a car count in the top class that's well into double figures, perhaps a Hypercar-LMP2-LMP3 pyramid can work. But that would be placing a lot of eggs in one basket, and arguably opens up the possibility of a future Group C-type implosion.

There are no easy options. Even just taking no action and seeing how the GTE classes evolve organically has its perils - what if either Porsche or Ferrari pulls the plug at the end of this year, effectively killing GTE Pro, and the number of Am cars drops from its historically high level for whatever reason? That would put the championship in a difficult position, too.

Clearly, for IMSA, replacing GTLM with GTD Pro makes sense, because it already has a thriving GT3-based class that stems from how its class structure was arranged at the time of unification in 2014. The WEC went down a different path, allowing a market for customer GTE cars to emerge, and that market has thrived in recent years - Porsche alone sold 10 of its 911 RSR-19s to customers last winter as they became newly eligible for the WEC and ELMS.

Unwinding that without destabilising the series will be a challenge, one that could prove to be every bit as much as a headache as the now-settled issue of prototype convergence.