How sportscar racing's big three stack up

Time was when a trip out to Becketts at Silverstone to watch the cars in free practice would have been followed by my arrival back in the press room with a pretty accurate 'guesstimate' of the top positions on the time sheets. Not any more, at least in the brave new world of the LMP1 class.

New rules for the premier class of the World Endurance Championship this season mean a new approach to getting around a lap. That much was evident when I ventured out to what these days we generically call Becketts - but is actually a sequence comprising Maggotts, Becketts and Chapel - for opening practice at the Silverstone WEC opener last Friday.

There aren't too many better places around the world to enjoy the sheer thrill of watching racing cars going bloody fast, nor many that allow - or rather allowed, in the case of LMP1 - you to make judgements by eye about who's quick and who's not.

I got my fix of racing cars going very, very fast almost straight away on my arrival when the two Audis piled through the initial left-right and then jumped on the brakes for the following left (since 1991 I've never been entirely sure where Maggotts ends and Becketts begins). Then, one of the Porsches came past - on an out-lap, or so I thought.

Low-downforce Porsche looked off the pace through Becketts © LAT

Next time around, it still appeared to be on an out-lap. And the next and the next.

The Toyota looked OK, much better than the Porsche, but not as quick as the Audi through this challenging sequence.

The personal timing screen in my head had the Audis leading a two-by-two order. There was no way, I thought, that they wouldn't lead the times and no way that the Porsches weren't the slowest of the factory P1 cars, and by some margin. I was wrong, totally and utterly wrong.

There was the Porsche 919 Hybrid sitting pretty at the top of the times when I grabbed a sheet after the session. What's more, the six factory cars - in a Porsche-Audi-Toyota-Audi-Toyota-Porsche order - were separated by a fraction over a second.

It was hard to believe until I looked at the straightline-speed figures. The Porsche was faster than the Audi by a full 29km/h (or 18mph in old money), while the Toyota bettered the R18 e-tron quattro by around 7km/h.

Going quickly around Silverstone in the past was all about screwing on as much downforce as possible. Speed in the fast stuff - Becketts, Stowe, Copse and, on the new layout, Abbey - was the key. That appears to have changed with new rules that are founded on efficiency. Or at least it has for two of the manufacturers.

Audi opted for the traditional, high-downforce approach: "Even the most simple simulation programme downloaded free from the internet would tell you that is what is required here," reckoned Ralf Juttner, technical director of the German manufacturer's Joest Racing team.

Toyota's half-way house philosophy with the TS040 was a reaction to the new regulations. "You need significant downforce, but not extreme downforce," said Toyota Motorsport technical boss Pascal Vasselon. "Now we have to save fuel, the calculation has changed the optimum: for sure we needed less downforce than last year."

Porsche took a different approach and ran its 919s very light on downforce. One reason was that it has decided that its focus for the first leg of the WEC will be on the Le Mans 24 Hours when straightline speed will be at a premium.

That surely makes sense for a newcomer when developing a second aero package is a significant task requiring significant resources. Remember the years when Audi's high-downforce package would come on stream only after the 24 Hours?

What we don't know is how Porsche will run the 919 after Le Mans. We are not expecting a significantly different aero package for the final races, but surely it won't go to a track like Interlagos, for instance, with so little downforce?

The margins between the three manufacturer cars were tiny last weekend © LAT

Or perhaps I am entirely wrong on that. The three distinct approaches - not to mention the different powertrain philosophies of each car - resulted in lap times around the latest iteration of the Silverstone Grand Prix Circuit that were just tenths apart. The margin in qualifying between the six factory P1s was just 0.452s, surely a ringing endorsement of the new rules if ever there was one.

The qualifying pace of the 919 Hybrid, combined with the #20 car's reliable run to third place in the race, also provided some level of confirmation that Porsche is going to be much more than a bit player in the WEC in its first year back in top-flight sportscar racing.

But what we shouldn't forget is that its hybrid technology offered an advantage at Silverstone over that employed by Toyota, which like Porsche and unlike Audi is recovering significant energy this season.

Silverstone might not have been the best track for Toyota, despite its one-two victory. The TS040 retrieves all its hybrid power through the brakes, and there aren't so many heavy braking areas at the home of British motorsport. Porsche also recuperates via an exhaust-gas-driven system, which one would suppose would work pretty well on a track with a lot of full-throttle running.

What we can't say is that Silverstone provided final confirmation that Porsche is truly in the game. There's no way a shortened wet-dry race with two safety-car periods - not to mention a double non-finish for one of the manufacturers - offered an accurate picture of what is to come up at Spa and Le Mans, and then the remainder of the season.

What we did learn last weekend was that Porsche has a car that is someway reliable, at least over six hours. And that it can match Toyota and Audi, though perhaps only at times because it didn't do that consistently last weekend. That, it should be pointed out, had a lot to do with running a low-downforce car in the damp and wet conditions that prevailed.

We also learnt - I think - that Audi and Toyota look evenly matched on pace and that the petrol cars appear to be able to go longer on a tank of fuel, something that Audi had warned us of before the race.

But perhaps most important of all is that we learnt that this season is going to involve real racing, strict fuel limits or no. The opening exchanges at Silverstone were frenetic in the extreme and as exciting as anything we've seen in previous years.