Why true WEC/IMSA convergence is a long way off yet

I've been dreaming about this for years: the same cars competing for overall victory at the Le Mans and Daytona 24-hour races.

It's never really happened during my time on the sportscar beat over the past quarter of a century or so, but that was the vision outlined last Friday at a joint press conference hosted by the Automobile Club de l'Ouest and IMSA.

I'm excited about what the two governing bodies told us on the eve of this year's Daytona 24 Hours. That was not so much the plans for 2021/22 but what they have in mind in the longer term for 'my' branch of the sport.

But like so many dreams, this one was hazy in the detail and left me feeling more than a little confused.

What we do know is that the next generation of Daytona Prototype international machinery, now dubbed LMDh, for the IMSA SportsCar Championship will be able to, in American parlance, "go for the overall" in the World Endurance Championship.

What we don't know is whether the LM Hypercars with which they are going to do battle in the WEC will be able to cross the Pond the other way and join them in the IMSA ranks.

That's a bit strange to my mind. If you are equating the performance of LMDh cars and LM Hypercars on one stage, then why can't you do it on the other?

The confusion over whether we'll see hypercars racing in IMSA in a couple of years' time undoubtedly stems from the back story to Friday's announcement.

Allowing a new breed of IMSA contender to compete in the WEC is clearly a pragmatic move on the part of the series' management and its promoter, the ACO. It's the WEC that needs cars at a time when there is still uncertainty over the future of the LM Hypercar division, even if we do now know that another sportscar grandee in Peugeot is coming some time in 2022.

IMSA has three manufacturers in its top class right now and it was already talking up the prospects for the next generation of car that had the working title of DPi 2.0 even before it revealed the added lure of the chance to race in the WEC and, perhaps more pertinently, at Le Mans. It doesn't have quite such a pressing need for more factory representation as the WEC.

Pierre Fillon called cars built for "one category with the same design and the same performance" a dream but it is a long way off becoming a reality right now

Opening up the WEC to IMSA machinery was an obvious move once the ACO had changed tack on the original hypercar rules and allowed road-based machinery to race against the lookalike prototypes for which the class was conceived. If you are going to invoke some kind of Balance of Performance to make sure two distinct types of car can go up against each other on equal terms, then you might as well chuck in a third.

But to my mind the ultimate prize at Le Mans shouldn't be fought over by cars that are artificially balanced. The 24 Hours, and by association the WEC, are far too important for that. These twin peaks are among the highest in motorsport and should in an ideal world remain unadulterated by the BoP.

That's why it was the longer term future talked about at Daytona on Friday that was important to me.

There is a will, IMSA and the ACO said, to create one set of rules that will straddle their respective arenas. My hope is that when we get there, the new class will lay down a set of regulations and then manufacturers will attempt to build the fastest car possible. Call me old-fashioned...

The original hypercar prototype rules, published as long ago as December 2018, suggest that it can be done. They have laid down strict criteria for car design. Downforce and minimum drag numbers, for example, are set in what appears to be a neat set of rules that do away with the necessity for massive - and expensive - aerodynamic development programmes.

Last Friday, ACO president Pierre Fillon talked about cars built for "one category with the same design and the same performance". So, here's hoping.

He called it a dream - that word again - but it is a long way off becoming a reality right now. We're about to start one new era for the WEC, now involving multiple types of machinery thrown together, and yet we're already talking about the next. Maybe that's a good thing.

New rulebooks have pre-determined lifecycles so that manufacturers and teams can justify their investment. That means we're probably looking at some point in the middle of the decade before we can to get to the convergence of the rules that I have dreamt about for so long.

For all the hullabalo and self-congratulation of Friday's press conference, we're only at the start of what I'm sure is going to be a long road towards true convergence.

Are the needs of a largely domestic series in North America and a global championship the same? Is there a will on the part of the US manufacturers to race beyond their own shores? Will the new IMSA formula really be accessible to privateers? Will the manufacturers developing LM Hypercars at far great cost than LMP2-based LMDh machinery hang around?

I could go on. There are so many questions that need to be answered before we reach the end of that road.

The claim that last Friday was an historic day for sportscar racing is premature. If the latest accord between the ACO and IMSA leads to one rulebook somewhere down the line it will be a massively important milestone.

If not, it will probably be nothing more than just a handy patch to ensure the short-term survival of the WEC.