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

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.

A honed system of Balance of Performance, which now includes the speed at which a hybrid LMH car can go into four-wheel-drive mode, was meant to equalise the cars. An increase in the hybrid activation speed for the Toyotas from 120km/h (75mph) in the dry last year to 190km/h certainly pulled the GR010 HYBRID back and put it on a par with the Glickenhaus-Pipo 007 LMH. But the grandfathered Alpine, an ORECA design that started life as the Rebellion R-13, was just plain quicker.

The #8 Toyota that finished second in the hands of Sebastien Buemi, Brendon Hartley and new signing Ryo Hirakawa was a second down on the average of the fastest 100 laps, the third-placed Glickenhaus of Romain Dumas, Olivier Pla and Ryan Briscoe slower than the Alpine by eight tenths.

It is difficult to reach any other conclusion that the rulemakers from the FIA and WEC promoter the Automobile Club de l’Ouest got it spectacularly wrong last weekend. Or rather over the last two weekends. The first BoP of the season came out ahead of the prologue pre-season test the weekend prior to the race marked ‘Sebring competition’ and remained unchanged throughout even in the face of the evidence from the test and free practice to suggest that some kind of revision was required. Whether or not it was possible isn’t clear because the document governing the BoP isn’t in the public domain.

Start action, Hypercar class

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

Buemi reckoned he knew early doors that Toyota’s unbeaten sequence of victories stretching through last season and back into the LMP1 era to Spa in August 2020 would come to an end. “We knew after five laps of the prologue that we weren’t going to be competitive,” said Buemi. “That’s all it took to confirm what we were expecting from the data.”

The Alpine simply worked better around Sebring, a bumpy circuit with multiple surface changes between asphalt and the concrete of the Second World War airfield on which the venue was built. Heavy cars don’t like bumps, of course, and the Alpine tipped the scales at 952kg, which compares with the 1070kg and 1030kg minimum weights for the Toyota and Glickenhaus LMHs respectively. The car almost certainly has more downforce than its rivals, too.

"BoP is done with simulations and simulations struggle to take into account circuits like Sebring with a lot of bumps. The models are probably not combining accurately on a circuit like this" Pascal Vasselon

“Our car is more in accordance with this circuit with the bumps,” said Signatech boss Philippe Sinault. He conceded that it is a more agile car.

Toyota reckoned that the rulemakers’ simulation models had been thrown out by the quirks of the Sebring track. “BoP is done with simulations and simulations struggle to take into account circuits like Sebring with a lot of bumps,” argued Toyota Gazoo Racing Europe technical director Pascal Vasselon. “The models are probably not combining accurately on a circuit like this, the affect of weight, power and downforce when the cars are very different in terms of the performance profile.”

The GR010 had taken a “big hit” ahead of Sebring, Vasselon explained. The advantage that comes with deploying power through the front wheels had been all but removed. Only at the Turn 1 left-hander and the Turn 17 right-hand loop was it actually being used in the corners. A bit of electrical grunt on the straight offers no advantage in the new era of sportscar racing. The maximum power allowed for hybrids is a combined figure from its internal combustion and electric powerplants.

Alpine might have had a clear upper hand last weekend, but it still had to overcome the deficit that blunted its performances last season. The ORECA design, based on its 07 LMP2 monocoque, can’t accommodate all the fuel allowed to it under the BoP, even with a small and so-far-undisclosed increase in capacity for the Le Mans 24 Hours last September.

That meant Lapierre and co would have needed to make at least one extra pitstop had the Sebring race run through to its eight-hour duration with little or no interruption. Lapierre and co were well on the way to achieving that inside the first three and a bit hours. The car was 1m15s to the good before pitting shortly before Jose Maria Lopez put the #7 Toyota on its roof in the Bishop Bend on three and a half hours. The ensuing red meant the Alpine drivers had to do it all over again, but that’s what they did.

Lopez was leading the race in the car he shared with Kamui Kobayashi and Mike Conway when he clipped the #88 Dempsey-Proton GTE Am Porsche with Julien Andlauer at the wheel on the exit of the hairpin and spun into the barriers. He misjudged the damage to the car as he headed back to the pits and, the team believed, the front splitter collapse as he tried to negotiate the left kink. He went straight into the tyres, which sent the car into the air and onto its roof, though he was able to climb out unaided.

That resulted in the first red flag of the Sebring 1000 Miles. The second and third were thrown because circuit rules call for an immediate halt to proceedings if lightning is reported within eight miles. The race was halted with 70 minutes left and again after two laps behind the safety car, with the result backdated to 194 laps.

The #8 Toyota was classified a lap up on the Glickenhaus, which was a minute or so behind when the lightning started. The American car was at the very least a match for the Toyota, a penalty for Briscoe after he overtook before the start/finish line at the first restart and a couple of slow stops blunting its challenge.
There is more to come, however, from the 007. The fly-by-wire brake activation on the rear axle was shelved by the team after two sessions of free practice and it is confident it will yield a significant gain. Outspoken team boss Jim Glickenhaus reckoned the team would have had a shot at second had the race gone the full duration. “We were turning some good laps there at the end,” he said. “We weren’t going to go quietly into the night.”

Podium LMP2: #23 United Autosports Usa Oreca 07 - Gibson: Paul di Resta, Oliver Jarvis, Joshua Pierson

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

Teenage sensation key to LMP2 victory

Josh Pierson turned 16 last month, yet last Friday he maintained a 100% record at the wheel of a United Autosports ORECA and followed up on his two Asian Le Mans Series victories in February with a debut victory in the WEC alongside Oliver Jarvis and Paul di Resta. An impressive triple stint from the American on the same four Goodyear tyres set the car up for the win.

Pierson took over from di Resta in the second hour and closed in on Phil Hanson in the other United ORECA-Gibson 07 that was leading the race and was able to shadow his team-mate and then take over the lead when Hanson stopped to hand over to Will Owen.

“When Josh was out in the car we asked him over the radio if could do a triple and he came back and told us he was up for it,” said United boss Richard Dean. “Him being able to do that really put us in a strong position. It was impressive from such an inexperienced driver.”

The other car truly in the mix last weekend was the Prema Powerteam’s ORECA shared by Robert Kubica, Louis Deletraz and Lorenzo Colombo

United might have won the race with either of its two ORECAs. Filipe Albuquerque led the early going in the car he shared with Hanson and Owen, but a spin for the last-named at the restart and an early stop resulting from it both lost the car time and compromised its strategy over the remainder of the race.

The other car truly in the mix last weekend was the Prema Powerteam’s ORECA shared by Robert Kubica, Louis Deletraz and Lorenzo Colombo. When the reds came out in the fourth hour, it looked like they were the only combo that might take the fight to the United cars. Deletraz was in the lead when the stoppage came, but committed to a triple on the tyres and he struggled afterwards. Colombo then got bottled up behind Roberto Gonzalez in the #38 Jota ORECA and lost more time.

The Prema car ended up fourth behind the two WRT ORECAs, which were beneficiaries of the first red. They were both 40s off the lead at that point, before the field bunched up at the safety car restart. Robin Frijns, Rene Rast and Sean Gelael ended up only 3.7s behind the winning United car, while the sister Realteam by WRT entry of Ferdinand Habsburg, Norman Nato and Rui Andrade completed the podium.

#92 Porsche GT Team Porsche 911 RSR - 19: Michael Christensen, Kevin Estre leads

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

Porsche wins GTE Pro as Corvette tyre gamble thwarted

Porsche prevailed over Chevrolet in a GTE Pro battle that was engaging rather than thrilling. Kevin Estre and Michael Christensen were classified nine seconds ahead of Nick Tandy and Tommy Milner, though the Porsche 911 RSR had led the Chevrolet Corvette C8.R by half a minute before the race was stopped by lightning for the first time.

The race would almost certainly have been much closer but for its interruptions and early curtailment. The stoppages certainly didn’t play into the hands of the Corvette Racing team’s tyre strategy.

Tandy got the ‘Vette up to second ahead of Gianmaria Bruni’s Porsche on lap 16 and then took over the lead after the first round of stops when he didn’t change tyres and Christensen got two new Michelins when he took over from Estre. More to the point, the Chevy driver was just able to hang on in the lead on ageing rubber through to his handover to Milner.

The Porsches, which had qualified 1-2, each lost 15s at the second round of stops, a time penalty for not following the correct procedure at the start: they’d left too much space to the LMP2 pack ahead of them. That time was made back at the first stoppage and both Porsches quickly made it past Milner, who was struggling after taking only right-side tyres in the middle of his double. “The red really put us on the back foot because I was on pretty old tyres by then,” said Milner, who received a hit from an LMP2 car at the restart. “Our strategy kind of unravelled at that point.”

The #92 Porsche led for the remainder of the race after Estre got past Milner. The German car appeared to have the edge as the temperatures dropped in the early evening. But the balance might have switched around had the race gone to the full eight hours. Chevrolet had more fresh tyres in the bank and might have been able to mount a comeback over the closing stages.

#64 Corvette Racing Chevrolet Corvette C8.R: Tommy Milner, Nick Tandy

Photo by: Paul Foster

“We saw them doing a double without a tyre change and thought that’s brave and could be a problem for us,” said Porsche’s Alexander Stehlig. “Their strategy could have played into their hands if it had been green flag all the way to the end.”

The #91 Porsche Bruni shared with Richard Lietz was right with the Corvette before the second red flag, but it wasn’t a match for the sister car after the opening hour. Stehlig couldn’t explain why, only saying that further analysis was required.

"We saw them [Corvette] doing a double without a tyre change and thought that’s brave and could be a problem for us" Alexander Stehlig

Ferrari was nowhere at Sebring. Neither of the pair of AF Corse-run factory 488 GTE Evos were within a second of the pace of the winning Porsche and the Chevrolet on the way to fourth and fifth positions. There was a firm no comment from anyone you cared to ask at Ferrari, sportscar racing boss Antonello Coletta included, as to the reasons why.

This time there was no BoP rhetoric from Ferrari. One theory over the lack of speed from the 488s was linked to the switch to a new biofuel introduced by WEC supplier TotalEnergies for this season. The fuel has a slightly lower energy content than its predecessor, though the BoP for Sebring was arrived at after running an engine from each manufacturer on the official dyno used by the series.

Podium GTE Am: #98 Northwest AMR Aston Martin Vantage AMR: Paul Dalla Lana, David Pittard, Nicki Thiim, Henrique Chaves

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

Aston Martin untouchable in GTE AM

Aston Martin claimed a dominant victory in GTE Am with the Prodrive-run NorthWest AMR car of Paul Dalla Lana, David Pittard and Nicki Thiim. Their Aston Vantage GTE was the quickest car in Am last week, but the introduction of the new biofuel threatened to undermine is chances.

Had the race run its full duration without any cautions the winning Aston would have needed to make an extra stop. The car couldn’t do a full hour on the fuel allocated to it under the Balance of Performance at Sebring. Even after the first stoppage, this might have undone Aston’s chances. Thiim hadn’t met the one-hour minimum drive-time required for the pro driver, which would have forced the team to make an extra stop to put him back in the car had the race restarted.

Dalla Lana starred against his fellow bronze-rated drivers at the start and Pittard continued the good work on his WEC debut. The car was a minute up the road from its rivals at the first stoppage.

When the race was stopped again, its advantage stood at 45s, though the confused end meant it was credited with a winning margin of more than three minutes over the TF Sport Aston shared by Ben Keating, Marco Sorensen and Florian Latorre.

“The team gave us an amazing car this week,” said Dalla Lana, who took the lead from Keating into Turn 1 at the start. “I can’t really explain why we were so much quicker than everyone else, but we know it likes high-speed tracks and it’s a lot more consistent than the old Vantage I raced here in 2019.”

Red Flag, all cars parked on the grid

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images