How WEC got off to a stormy start in 2022 as rulemakers dampen Toyota's dominance

Toyota’s stranglehold on the World Endurance Championship ended at the 2022 opener at Sebring, but all accusing eyes were on the Balance of Performance system as the key to the shake-up. Here's how it unfolded, to see Alpine celebrating under a stormy sky having blown away the defending champions

Ten laps into the Sebring 1000 Miles, Alpine’s old LMP1 car was running almost that many seconds up the road from the best of the rest in the Hypercar pack. The French machine had already claimed the pole by 1.3s and nothing occurred over the remainder of the World Endurance Championship season-opener last Friday to suggest that it didn’t have a clear performance advantage around the quirky airfield circuit. A 37s margin of victory for Alpine drivers Matthieu Vaxiviere, Nicolas Lapierre and Andre Negrao revealed little about this race.

A more telling figure was the one minute and 15 or so seconds advantage held by the car in the third hour, shortly before the red flags came out for the first of three times over the course of a race stopped early as a result of lightning strikes. The Toyota and Glickenhaus Le Mans Hypercars couldn’t hold a candle to the Alpine-Gibson A480 around the 3.74-mile Sebring International Raceway.

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Author Gary Watkins

Gary Watkins has, for reasons best known to himself, devoted all his working life to covering sportscar racing. This season is his 33rd as a motorsport journalist, during which time he has reported on major long-distance events on four continents and approaching 80 24-hour races. He reckons a degree in political philosophy makes him well qualified for covering the sometimes Machiavellian world of international sportscars.

Gary, who also writes for Motor Sport, Autocourse, RACER and others, lives in Surbiton close to the former workshops of the Cooper Formula 1 team but spends more time on the road than at home for most of the year.