How Porsche and the WEC restored the best of sportscar racing

Typical. The two things I and every other self-respecting fan of endurance racing had been waiting for came along almost at once in the decade just past, just like long-anticipated buses.

The return of a proper world championship and Porsche back at the pinnacle of the discipline made the 2010s historically significant for this branch of the sport. They were two buses that I thought would never come.

That makes it churlish to complain that they kind of arrived together.

The new World Endurance Championship might have kicked off in 2012 and Porsche's new LMP1 challenger didn't grace its grid until two years after that, but they were actually announced within days of each other. The WEC was confirmed on June 3 2011, Porsche's entry into the LMP1 ranks with what became the 919 Hybrid came on the last day of the same month.

But the two pieces of news weren't as connected as you might think.

Porsche made no mention of the WEC in its press statement, while the marque's top brass played down the significance of the return of the world championship in the decision-making process. Its comeback was all about the Le Mans 24 Hours and the chance to showcase hybrid technology under the LMP1 regs, they insisted.

But the return of world championship sportscar racing was important to someone like me, who grew up reading about the original version that ran continuously, albeit under a variety of names, from 1953 until 1992. I'm also old enough to have reported on it. It seemed natural to me that world titles should be awarded in endurance racing.

But there didn't seem to be much traction for the idea. A proper world series seemed a long way off for much of the near 20 years that lapsed between the old and the new championships.

There were false dawns along the way, of course. Don't forget that the BRP Organisation used the 'global' tag for the series that went some way to filling the void left by the demise of Group C. The FIA GT Championship that followed in 1997 didn't have any such prefix, but it did kick off with five manufacturers in the top class and races on three continents, more than enough to warrant world championship status under FIA rules.

There were also plans for a Global Le Mans Series announced by Don Panoz. He wanted to link the American and Europe Le Mans Series he launched in 1999 and 2001 respectively with a planned Asia-Pacific Le Mans Series that never got beyond the one-off Adelaide street event that counted for ALMS points in 2000. That idea quickly floundered along with the original ELMS.

When Porsche dropped the bombshell that it wouldn't be returning to defend its Le Mans crown in 1999, it said it was only taking a sabbatical

And, of course, we had the FIA GT1 World Championship from 2010 to 2012. Yes, it was a world championship and it was FIA sanctioned; but no, it wasn't a successor to the 'old' world championship. Nor did it pretend to be. It was sprint racing, not endurance racing, after all.

What the Global Endurance GT Series (to give it its full name) and GT1 World (to use that snappy tagline that never quite caught on) didn't have was the Le Mans 24 Hours at their centre.

I know a lot of you are going to say that the French enduro race wasn't always on the old world championship calendar as race organiser the Automobile Club de l'Ouest and the governing body fell in and out of love. But that's not the point: the same cars that contested the world series generally, if not always, went to Le Mans.

Le Mans, as the most important sportscar race of them all, needed to be part of any world championship revival, which is why I was so pessimistic for so long about a return. The ACO repeatedly told us after the launch of the Le Mans Endurance Series in 2004 that the big race would never be part of the schedule.

That policy changed along with the people at the top of the ACO, at the same time as a new president arrived at the FIA with a bit of history in sportscars. Jean Todt had masterminded Peugeot's Group C successes in the early 1990s.

These changes resulted in the Intercontinental Le Mans Cup, initially as a three-race pilot series in 2010 and then as full-blown championship with Le Mans at its centre the following year. That would have been enough for me. A full-blown world championship with FIA status was even better.

The wait for Porsche to return to its natural hunting ground at the front of the Le Mans grid wasn't quite so long. But it was probably more frustrating.

Don't forget that when Porsche dropped the bombshell that it wouldn't be returning to defend its Le Mans crown in 1999, it said it was only taking a sabbatical. When its all-new LMP2000 was canned even before its one-off test run, we entered a new period of waiting.

Porsche dropped some pretty heavy hints that it would go racing with the Carrera GT, though probably not in pursuit of ultimate glory at Le Mans, and then came the RS Spyder aimed at North America. There was a presumption by many that the LMP2 project would be a precursor to an LMP1 attack. That turned out to be yet another false dawn.

But Porsche did finally come back and took a leading role in what I hope will come to be regarded as one of the greatest periods of sportscar racing. It has now departed for pastures new in Formula E, having reminded everyone that it really is the king of Le Mans with a hat-trick of outright victories from 2015 to 2017.

Manufacturers come and go; we have to accept that. Thankfully the WEC is still with us after weathering the storm that followed Porsche's withdrawal from the top flight at the end of 2017.

So, if the LM Hypercar era starting next September proves to be a success, I reckon my next wait for Porsche to return to the highest echelons of sportscars won't be quite so long.