How Le Mans causes problems for the WEC

The World Endurance Championship title wasn't won in a very satisfactory manner in 2016. Not wrong, just unsatisfactory given that the eventual champions Neel Jani, Marc Lieb and Romain Dumas didn't pick up a single piece of silverware between their Le Mans trophies and their end-of-season gongs.

The trouble is that awarding double points for the Le Mans 24 Hours somehow skews the championship. I'm not saying that giving twice the normal number of points for the blue riband round of the series is not correct, just that it has such an effect on the outcome that it detracts from the remainder of the WEC.

You have to reach that conclusion when the champions seal the title with a run of fourth, fifth and sixth positions. If we want the WEC to become more than a sideshow of races around Le Mans something has to be done.

One solution, and I've talked about this before, is to have more points up for grabs right at the end of the season. And I'm not talking about some kind of gimmick like the decision to award double points for the 2014 Formula 1 finale in Abu Dhabi.

Extra points need to be earned, which is why I like the idea of a longer race to finish the year. It's not a new idea, of course, but one that has merit. Why not have a 12-hour race to bring the curtain down on the WEC and award points and a half? It would help ensure the championship remains well and truly open right down to the wire.

Another solution talked about in one of the innumerable working groups that help shape the future of the WEC is the idea of awarding points in increments at Le Mans. Again that's nothing new: points are dished out on the basis of the six, 12 and 24-hour classifications at the Spa 24 Hours Blancpain GT Series round.

That's not favoured by race organiser and WEC promoter the Automobile Club de l'Ouest, and I tend to agree. The challenge of Le Mans is all about taking the chequered flag (crowd invasions permitting). Awarding points at different times though the race could be regarded as some kind of stunt insulting of the traditions of the event.

Whatever it is, a solution needs to be found. A problem that affects all the classes in the WEC is going to be more pertinent than ever in LMP1 with only two manufacturers in the wake of Audi's withdrawal. A factory P1 car needs to have a fairly sizeable delay to finish behind a privateer entry (of which we're only likely to have one in 2017), let alone an LMP2 car (even if they are going to be significantly faster this season).

There's a wider issue worthy of discussion while we're talking about slipping a longer race into the schedule. And that's the anonymity of the majority of WEC rounds. Few, if any, of the six-hour races are truly events - they are just rounds of a championship. That's particularly true of the races that make up the quick-fire post-Le Mans leg of the series.

The world sportscar championship (a generic description without capitals for the series that ran from 1953 until 1992) was made up of races of different lengths for the better part of its history. Think back to its inaugural year, and it incorporated the Sebring 12 Hours (1008 miles that season), the Mille Miglia (1000 miles, of course) and the Carrera Panamericana (nearly 2000 miles!).

That's probably not a very good example given that the series incorporated two long-lost road races of the ilk we will never see again. But even in the more homogenised times of the 1980s, there were races of different durations. The 1988 World Sports-Prototype Championship included three 360km 'sprints' (Sandown's season finale is pictured below).

I don't see why every WEC round either side of Le Mans needs to be six hours. A variety of durations could help imbue some of the races in the second half of the year with a more distinct character. It could give what for the moment are nondescript championship rounds a unique selling point, something they surely need.

I fancy the idea of a nine-hour race, say at Silverstone, though not in April obviously. Given that there are nigh on 50,000 Brits at Le Mans each year, why not try to tempt them to dust off the tent and clean out the barby, and then pitch up for a race that goes deep into darkness on a (hopefully) barmy summer's evening at the home of British motor racing?

And how about a four-hour event somewhere? That's a length of sportscar race that always seemed to work well in my eyes in the days of the BPR-run Global Endurance GT Series in the mid-1990s (pictured below at Donington Park). It might suit those markets where there is less of a heritage - and understanding - of long-distance sportscar racing.

A shorter race would be deserving of fewer points by the same logic that a longer race would be deserving of more. That might sound like it would further confuse a branch of our sport that isn't the most intellectually accessible to the casual fan, but there is a precedent.

Back in 1988, there were different points scales in operation for Le Mans, the 1000km races and the three sprints respectively. I don't remember anyone suggesting it was either confusing or in any way unfair back then.

Sprint races of the kind we saw at the Norisring back in the 1980s - one driver in 1986 and two drivers and two heats in '87 - are another matter entirely. Something along those lines was proposed by then Nissan motorsport boss Darren Cox in 2015: he floated the idea of a sprint race on qualifying day at each WEC event and didn't get a favourable reaction.

I suggested at the time that it would be like asking international cricketers to play a quick-fire Twenty20 game before setting out into a five-day Test Match. In other words, I thought it was crazy on the basis that you should never mix your sweets and your savouries.

But there could be merit to mixing a sprint event into the WEC if a Norisring-type venue that would ensure a big crowd could be found. The problem would be that the majority of cars in the WEC have three drivers, and that's particularly pertinent in the LMP2 and GTE Am classes where the business case of the teams is based on selling seats.

That would surely mitigate sprints - unless we had three of them at the event - and perhaps even my idea of races of different lengths and durations. So too could the costs involved in putting addition running time into the championship. So how about a trio of four-hour races so we can have a 12-hour finale?

Some might also point out that TV schedules demand events of regular lengths. I would argue that we've hardly hit upon a magic formula with six hours. I reckon the aficionados who tune in for the full duration now would be quite excited by a nine or 12-hour race, and for everyone else, a highlights package is a highlights package whether it's culled from four, six, nine or 12 hours of racing.

None of my ideas can be incorporated into the 2017 WEC; it's much too late for that, of course. But the series is set to undergo significant change in the coming years as the ACO, the FIA and manufacturers try to come up with a set of LMP1 technical regulations that will encourage more factory participation.

I just hope that the focus isn't entirely on the technical in the months to come. Changes are needed on the sporting side, too, if the WEC is to gain the attention from the outside world it deserves and emerge from the shadow of the Le Mans 24 Hours.