How Toyota defeated Alpine for the 2022 WEC title

Toyota duly collected another clean sweep of World Endurance Championship titles – drivers’ and manufacturers’ – as well the piece of silverware that mattered: the one on offer at the Le Mans 24 Hours. Yet unlike last year in season one of the Le Mans Hypercar rules, it was made to sing for its supper, though more in terms of the mathematics of the points table than the action out on the race track. Alpine went into the curtain-closer in Bahrain equal on points with the Japanese marque in the drivers’ championship.

The French manufacturer may have had the points on the board ahead of the Bahrain 8 Hours last month, but it didn’t have the performance to mount a challenge when the WEC circus arrived in the Middle East. Sebastien Buemi, Brendon Hartley and Ryo Hirakawa duly sealed the title with a safe second aboard the #8 Toyota GR010 HYBRID behind the sister car of Kamui Kobayashi, Mike Conway and Jose Maria Lopez. The Alpine-Gibson A480 shared by Nicolas Lapierre, Matthieu Vaxiviere and Andre Negrao trailed home third to no great surprise.

The Balance of Performance hit that Alpine had taken ahead of the previous round at Fuji in September had only been partially reversed after Lapierre and his team-mates had finished the same margin down on the Toyotas. A couple of tweaks – a tad more power for the A480, a bit less for the GR010 – still left it lingering some way back on performance.

Yet there were occasions when Alpine’s old ORECA LMP1 design, which formerly raced as the Rebellion R-13, was in the mix, or was even the cream on top. Nowhere was that more the case than at the Sebring 1000 Miles season-opener in March. Vaxiviere put the car on pole by a whopping 1.3s and, quite frankly, the ageing machine developed out of the ORECA 07 LMP2 design was in a different class to both Toyota’s GR010 and the Glickenhaus-Pipo 007 LMH, the only other participant in the Hypercar class.

A 37s victory for the Alpine over the #8 Toyota didn’t tell the full story of a race that was red-flagged three times and curtailed early as a result of the threat of lightning strikes in the vicinity. The gap would have been much more had the race run its course without interruption.

It was much closer when Alpine won for a second time at Monza in July. Much, much closer given that the race was effectively decided by a controversial coming together on the main straight between Vaxiviere and Kobayashi.

But the real controversy, perhaps, was the Balance of Performance, though less so than over the course of Sebring week. The BoP for the grandfathered Alpine, which worked to a separate set of guidelines to those covering the LMH machinery, see-sawed through the season. It was unfathomable to such an extent that it was difficult to understand what the rulemakers – the FIA and the Automobile Club de l’Ouest – were trying to achieve.

Alpine opened the season with a dominant victory at Sebring, where Lopez crashed out heavily

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

If it was trying to conform to the generally held philosophy that grandfathered cars should be competitive enough to pick up the pieces should the new machinery somehow hiccup, then they got it wrong, spectacularly so at Sebring. If they were trying to make for decent racing, they got it wrong too. As far as the races went, only at Monza were the Alpine and Toyota close in performance, and then the Glickenhaus was a few tenths up the road from the pair of them.

But if the intent was to keep the championship open deep to the end of the season, they got it spot on. Witness the tie on points going into the Bahrain weekend. The FIA and ACO chose never to offer an explanation of its intent.

Le Mans was a case in point of the continual tinkering with the Alpine’s BoP. When the car proved to be a couple of seconds off the pace in practice and first qualifying, the car was given a not-insignificant increase in power for the Hyperpole qualifying session on Thursday. Those two seconds suddenly became a few tenths, and the A480 was promptly partially pegged back again. It would have been nowhere in the race even without the technical issues and a stop for repairs after an off that left it 18 laps behind at the finish.

Le Mans was ultimately decided by one of those electrical glitches that hit hybrid racing cars from time to time. Lopez had to bring #7 to a halt just after Arnage corner to perform a full systems reboot. When he made it back to the pits, he had to go through the procedure twice more

Alpine’s championship challenge was aided by the failure of Toyota to get one of its cars to the finish at both Sebring and Spa: each car registered a retirement in the opening two races. In terms of the internecine battle within the Toyota Gazoo Racing squad it kind of levelled things up in the fight between the two revised GR010s, now with wider rear wheels and tyres than fronts, rather than the equal sizes of 2021. The two cars headed into Le Mans separated by two points, #8 ahead of #7, down in third and fourth positions behind the Alpine crew and Glickenhaus drivers Romain Dumas and Olivier Pla.

Le Mans ultimately decided the destiny of the drivers’ title. A double-points race was always going to skew the championship more in a six-race contest than in the days when the WEC was contested over eight or more rounds.

Le Mans could have gone either way. It was close between the two Toyotas until just before two-thirds duration. The Japanese cars were generally separated by just a handful of seconds in a race where the two crews left nothing on the table. If you do the lap time averages between the two cars over those first 16 hours, they were separated by less than a tenth using almost any sample.

The race was ultimately decided by one of those electrical glitches that hit hybrid racing cars from time to time. Lopez had to bring #7 to a halt just after Arnage corner to perform a full systems reboot. When he made it back to the pits, he had to go through the procedure twice more. The time lost meant that after Hartley had made his next scheduled stop the gap was out to nearly three minutes. With the Toyota crews so evenly matched there was no way back for Lopez and his team-mates. The gap between them stood at almost exactly two minutes at the finish.

Victory for Buemi, Hirakawa and Hartley at Le Mans was crucial in determining the order of the Toyotas in the standings

Photo by: Christopher Lee / Motorsport Images

A hat-trick of WEC titles for Kobayashi, Conway and Lopez was looking unlikely even before the drivers of #8 overturned the qualifying form of their in-house rivals on home ground at Fuji. Buemi and co anticipated the warmer conditions of race day with a set-up tweak to take a clear win. The #7 crew now needed the sister car to non-finish in Bahrain if they were to win the title.

Glickenhaus achieved a lot with its Pipo-engined 007 LMH. Podium finishes in the first two races owed everything to Toyota’s failure to get two cars to the finish, though the one at Le Mans didn’t. Third place for Richard Westbrook, Ryan Briscoe and Franck Mailleux was the team’s biggest achievement, and it ran Toyota close for the first quarter of the race: Pla in the sister car shared with Dumas and Pipo Derani was only a couple of minutes behind the battling GR010s when he looped it at Tertre Rouge, glanced the barrier and lost nine minutes to suspension repairs.

Yet Glickenhaus could have finished up with a race victory. It had the speed at Monza after Dumas had taken a second pole for the 007 following Pla’s qualifying top spot at Spa. The #708 car was delayed with a drivethrough for a Full Course Yellow infraction, but had the pace to claw back the lost time. A turbo failure saw that it didn’t.

Glickenhaus had committed to a single full-season entry and duly got a second car in for Le Mans. The FIA and the ACO made it clear that the team would be cut some slack when it came to fulfilling that single-car entry at all the races. Whether they were expecting Glickenhaus to give both the final two races a miss isn’t clear. The same goes for whether we will see Glickenhaus back next year.

Peugeot made a belated WEC debut at Monza in July, a shade over 10 years after it almost pulled the rug from underneath the series when it announced that it wouldn’t be joining the born-again WEC in 2012. It was late in that sense, but not in terms of its entry halfway through the season with the new 9X8 LMH. It entered the full series with two cars as it had to, because race-by-race entries are not permitted in Hypercar. Yet it always reserved judgement on when it would join the fray.

A mid-summer entry more or less corresponded to the timeline it laid down on the announcement of its return to the sportscar big time back in November 2019. Back then, when the WEC was in the midst of its first and, as it turned out, only season run to a winter-series format, Peugeot said it would be joining the party at the start of the 2022-23 season, which meant the end of the summer.

Peugeot always said it would be taking part in races in 2022 to learn ahead of the big push next year and the return to its happy hunting ground at Le Mans. It certainly did a lot of learning with its avant-garde contender, which remained sans rear wing like the first show car revealed in 2021.

Pla, Dumas and Derani took on-merit podium with #708 Glickenhaus at Le Mans, the team's highlight before engine failure at Monza

Photo by: Marc Fleury

The in-house Peugeot Sport team failed to get a car to the end of a race cleanly, which has to be regarded as a significant failure. It endured technical problems each time and registered retirements with one of its cars in two of the races. It could do no better than three fourths, each time some way in arrears of the third-placed car. There were signs that the car had the pace, as it should given the prescriptions of the LMH rulebook, especially when it got a BoP break for the Bahrain finale.

Paul di Resta put the #93 9X8 on the front row and was pretty much in the hunt over the opening double stint. Jean-Eric Vergne then took fastest race lap on the car’s return to the track after the gearbox issues that would eventually put it out of the race.

The 9X8 wasn’t so far off the pace at any of the races, at least over the opening stint on the tyres. It looked less convincing over the course of a double on a set of Michelins, though making judgements was difficult given the technical problems the cars encountered.

GTE Pro - Ferrari staggers over the line to era-ending crown

Pier Guidi and Calado saw off Porsche to win GTE Pro's final crown, despite gearbox problems threatening a DNF in Bahrain

Photo by: Ferrari

Ferrari didn’t look like a championship challenger in GTE Pro at the start of the campaign at Sebring when its 488 GTE Evo was just plain slow. Nor as it drew to a close in Bahrain as the car that could do the business limped around seven or so seconds off the pace with a gearbox problem. Yet Alessandro Pier Guidi and James Calado somehow managed to mount a successful defence of their title in the final year for the class.

Ferrari was nowhere at Sebring and again in the dry at Spa after a BoP reset following the introduction of a new biofuel from WEC supplier TotalEnergies. Pier Guidi and Calado’s season changed when the rain came at Spa. The Italian propelled the car from nowhere into the class lead over the course of a mammoth stint lasting four and a half hours, and then Calado successfully fought a rearguard action against Porsche driver Michael Christensen to seal the victory.

Ferrari was still not a match for the Porsche 911 RSR or the Chevrolet Corvette C8.R at Le Mans, but the misfortune of others allowed Pier Guidi, Calado and Daniel Serra to take a big tranche of points with second position. A BoP change in Ferrari’s favour for Monza then changed the course of the season.

Porsche wasn’t happy with its BoP over the second half of the season, and neither was Corvette Racing on its first full-season participation in the WEC. The automatic system introduced back in 2017 was effectively abandoned

Porsche struggled thereafter and wasn’t a competitive proposition. It meant that after a win at Fuji the lead Ferrari crew went into the series decider with a points lead they miraculously managed to hang onto, despite Pier Guidi spending the final hour and a half in fifth gear.

Porsche wasn’t happy with its BoP over the second half of the season, and neither was Corvette Racing on its first full-season participation in the WEC. The automatic system introduced back in 2017 was effectively abandoned. The off-season reset meant no change for the regular races (Le Mans laid outside the system) could occur until Monza, but the lack of dry laps at Spa prevented that. The changes that started at Monza were all so-called ‘black balls’.

Christensen and Kevin Estre ended up second in the standings, though only because Porsche swapped the positions of its two cars in third and fourth places on the final lap in Bahrain. A last-gasp problem for the ailing Ferrari could still have given them the title.

Tyre blowout at Le Mans proved costly for #92 Porsche crew, who eventually finished runners-up

Photo by: Marc Fleury

The lead Porsche duo had started the season with victory at Sebring and second at Spa, but together with Laurens Vanthoor they lost a shot at victory at Le Mans with a tyre blowout. Christensen had locked up at Mulsanne Corner before the front-right gave up and ripped apart the front end.

That left the way clear for the full-season Chevy entry in which Alexander Sims joined Nick Tandy and Tommy Milner, only for the first-named to be sideswiped into the barriers by pro-am LMP2 driver Francois Perrodo. Gianmaria Bruni, Richard Lietz and Frederic Makowiecki came through to take the win ahead of the Ferrari.

The solo WEC entry from Corvette Racing won at Monza when the second Ferrari shared by Antonio Fuoco and Miguel Molina ducked into the pits right at the end for a splash of fuel. Second at Sebring and Bahrain, Tandy and Milner would have won the title with the 50 points they lost at Le Mans.

LMP2 - Consistent Jota finally ends title hoodoo

Impressive consistency, tallied with victory at Le Mans, helped secure LMP2 spoils for Jota

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

Jota had been at the forefront of the LMP2 pack almost from the moment it joined the division in the European Le Mans Series back in 2012. Ahead of this season it had two Le Mans wins to its name, and no fewer than six runner-up spots, but missing from its CV was a WEC title. It put that right with a championship triumph for Antonio Felix da Costa, Will Stevens and Roberto Gonzalez anchored by win number three at the French enduro.

That Le Mans victory for the #38 ORECA-Gibson 07, best described as sublime, was one of the twin building blocks of its championship assault. The other was consistency: da Costa, Stevens and Gonzalez finished off the podium in only one of the six races.

Da Costa took the lead during the first round of pitstops at Le Mans. With track position in its favour, the Jota ORECA then won time during a series of Full Course Yellow virtual safety cars. The Portuguese and his team-mates would lead all but 15 laps.

WRT won three times, but Frijns crashed out at Le Mans in a car delayed by a penalty for Rast’s role in a bizarre startline incident. Another non-score at Monza with a water leak meant Frijns and Gelael had only the remotest of chances of taking the title

Le Mans was also significant in the story of Jota’s run to the title because none of its nearest competitors managed a significant points haul. WRT, champion in its maiden season in the class in 2021, ended up second in the classification with its lead ORECA shared by Robin Frijns, Sean Gelael and Rene Rast, who was replaced by Dries Vanthoor when he was on DTM duty on the Fuji weekend.

They won three times – at Spa, Fuji and in dominant style in Bahrain – but Frijns crashed out at Le Mans in a car delayed by a penalty for Rast’s role in a bizarre startline incident. Another non-score at Monza with a water leak meant Frijns and Gelael had only the remotest of chances of taking the title heading into the final round.

WRT fielded a second car, in conjunction with Swiss entrant Realteam, in 2022. This ORECA shared by Ferdinand Habsburg, Norman Nato and Rui Andrade was also a race winner, at Monza, and claimed a further two podiums on the way to fourth in the points behind the best of United Autosports’ entries.

The British team started the season in style at Sebring: either of its two cars could have won the 1000-mile fixture. Oliver Jarvis and 16-year-old Josh Pierson ended up taking the victory together with di Resta, who came in for Alex Lynn, who was racing in the 12 Hours the following day with the Ganassi Cadillac squad. Pierson would go on to become the youngest driver to start Le Mans three months later in the middle of an up-and-down season for United.

Francois Perrodo, Nicklas Nielsen and Alessio Rovera won the pro-am LMP2 sub-class in their AF Corse-run ORECA after winning four of the six races. The other two, Le Mans included, went to the Algarve Pro crew of Rene Binder, James Allen and Steven Thomas.

GTE Am - Keating-TF alliance yields the spoils 

Keating's second win at Fuji helped put the GTE Am title beyond TF Sport's rivals

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

Ben Keating, consistently among the quickest bronze-rated drivers since joining the WEC, claimed the big prizes in GTE Am with victory at Le Mans and, at the third time of asking, the title with the TF Sport Aston Martin squad.

The American and co-champion Marco Sorensen, on loan from the factory, took a big step towards the crown with victory at Le Mans together with Henrique Chaves, who joined the team at Spa. They didn’t have the fastest car in the Aston Martin Vantage GTE, but good fortune behind the safety car with five hours to go propelled the car into a lead it would hold to the chequered flag. Another win at Fuji, to go with the runner-up spots in the first two races, gave Keating and Sorensen a near-unassailable lead ahead of Bahrain.

The works-run NorthWest AMR Aston shared by Nicki Thiim, David Pittard and Paul Dalla Lana was on the podium for the first three races, winning at Sebring and finishing second at Le Mans, but thereafter its challenge faltered.

The all-female Iron Dames Ferrari looked increasingly competitive over the second half of the year, taking a podium in each of the final three races with Sarah Bovy, Rahel Frey and Michelle Gatting. Behind them in the championship came the top Porsche crew, the Multimatic-run Dempsey-Proton entry driven by Harry Tincknell, Sebastian Priaulx and Christian Ried that won twice. A suspension problem at Le Mans and then retirement with driveshaft failure at Fuji did for their championship chances.

Keating and Sorensen, joined by Chaves for all rounds after Sebring, were crowned class champions

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images