Why Audi's return heralds a new halcyon age for sportscars

Given the crisis that blights our world today, I'm sure I've not been alone in wishing for a time machine to whirl me back to happier times. My dreams came true on Monday, at least those for the discipline of the sport I love, when Audi announced its return to frontline endurance racing. It felt like I'd been dumped back in the winter of 2011-12, a time when we were relishing a three-way battle between the German manufacturer, Peugeot and Toyota in the born-again World Endurance Championship coming on stream in the year ahead.

That was an exciting time for international sportscar racing. We had Audi and Peugeot, who'd been at it hammer and tongs at the Le Mans 24 Hours and then the Intercontinental Le Mans Cup for six seasons, and another grandee of the endurance world in Toyota coming to the LMP1 party in 2012 for some development races ahead of a full campaign the following year.

Porsche, by that time, had announced that it would be joining them in 2014. Sportscar racing was on the up, and many of us were predicting we were set for a halcyon age.

Peugeot, it turned out, was absent when the new era began at Sebring in March 2012. It made a shock withdrawal just a couple of months before the season after doing an abrupt U-turn, having signed off the programme with its new 908 Hybrid4 one day and changed its mind the next.

We still got our halcyon age, though, Peugeot or no Peugeot. That was thanks in part to Toyota for stepping up to the plate in the nascent WEC's hour of need by agreeing to bring forward its programme.

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Now we can confidently say that the three-way battle that never was will commence after a delay of more than 10 years. Toyota and Peugeot will be on the grid with LM Hypercars and 13-time Le Mans winner Audi with an LMDh machine based around an off-the-shelf LMP2 racer. Audi didn't put a date on its re-entry to the top-flight of sportscar racing for the first time since 2016, but my understanding is that it will be 2023, the season that the LMDh class will get properly going in North America's IMSA SportsCar Championship.

Peugeot will be joining the WEC sometime in 2022, so by 2023 we will have three major manufacturers, each with a rich sportscar pedigree, at Le Mans and beyond. Porsche, too, is very much in the mix.

Audi's sister marque has made no secret of its interest in the LMDh category, which will allow the same machinery to race across the WEC and IMSA. Porsche has revealed that it is already undertaking an evaluation of the rules and says that we can expect more news sometime this year.

The idea that the world's top motorsport categories are being divvied up within the Volkswagen Group can be discounted. Audi isn't departing Formula E at the end of the 2021 season (nee 2020-21), the first as an FIA world championship, to leave the way open for Porsche. And Porsche isn't going to steer away from top-line sportscars to offer a clear path for Audi.

The announcement of the LMDh class in January was more timely than we could ever have known. It offers a cost-effective route into the major sportscar enduros - Le Mans, Daytona and Sebring - and the series built around them with cars that evoke a brand's identity

Audi wasn't particularly forthcoming on details when it announced this week that it will be quitting FE to return to rallying with an all-electric assault on the Dakar Rally and then prototypes. A few supplementary questions fired over to try to put flesh on the bones were met with a "we'll be making further announcements in due course" kind of reply.

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Not only was there no date for the prototype return, Audi offered no insight into how it will be approaching that return. Will it run a full-blown factory team as in the past with Joest? Or will it adopt the model of its GT3 programme by selling cars to customers and then putting its weight behind the best of them for the big races? My understanding is that it will be somewhere in between.

The Audi statement talked about "taking the next step in electrified motorsport" with the 2022 Dakar entry using "an innovative prototype" rather than the reasons behind its FE withdrawal. It appears that FE wasn't favoured by new Audi boss Markus Duesmann (below), who was appointed in the spring, for the simple reason that the cars aren't recognisable as Audis and never will be so long as FE and the FIA stick to their guns in insisting that it's the technology that's important not how the cars look.

And therein lies the beauty of top-line prototype racing as it has been redefined for the future. Both LMH and LMDh allow for the cars that will do battle in the WEC and IMSA to resemble something the manufacturer actually sells.

The Toyota LMH contender out testing since October in readiness for next season is being developed alongside a new high-end sportscar for the road, which will take inspiration from the GR Super Sport Concept shown as long ago as January 2018. Peugeot has made play of its ability to impart the styling cues of its road car range into its forthcoming racer.

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LMDh extends the principles enshrined in the IMSA Daytona Prototype international category that started back in 2017. The successors to the current DPi cars, we are told, will look the part, rather than carrying weird appendages seemingly nailed on in the name of styling.

Manufacturers need a message when they go racing. The LMP1 big guns got to shout about their technological credentials in the high-tech hybrid era, but nothing betters a racing car that actually looks like something those watching at the track or on TV can buy.

We were probably all blind to it at the time, but the costs of the LMP1 hybrids quickly spiralled out of control. The rule makers and the manufacturers certainly were. Don't forget we were talking about cars with three hybrid systems at one point and then an "electric kilometre" that the cars had to undertake after each fuel stop without recourse to the internal combustion engine.

In the years when the manufacturer slugfest in LMP1 was getting going after the relaunch of the WEC, no one could have predicted how the world would change in such a short time. We only had an inkling about the drive towards electrification, and certainly no idea what was around the corner with the dieselgate scandal that engulfed the VW brand and COVID.

The announcement of the LMDh class in January was more timely than we could ever have known. It offers a cost-effective route into the major sportscar enduros - Le Mans, Daytona and Sebring - and the series built around them with cars that evoke a brand's identity.

Audi has taken the bait, and others will no doubt follow. We're pretty sure Porsche is coming and Honda's Acura marque has given a clear intent to continue in IMSA beyond the life of its current DPi, although it has yet to commit.

Ferrari has been a major player in the rule-making process, so the hope has to be that it or perhaps another brand from the Fiat Chrysler stable will come to the table either in LMDh or LMH. That's not to forget that boutique manufacturer Glickenhaus and WEC stalwart ByKolles, with aspirations to be one, have LMH cars on the stocks for next year.

If you're a sportscar fan like me, you have to be excited, perhaps more excited than nine years ago. We really could be the cusp of another great age for sportscar racing. So, if I can just borrow that time machine again, I want to go straight to January 2023.