How WEC rules will guarantee Toyota defeats

Toyota isn't going to win every round of the World Endurance Championship in 2019/20.

That's the Japanese manufacturer's own prediction in the run-up to the start of the new season at the Silverstone 4 Hours this weekend. A new system of success handicaps - a novel and more scientific take on the idea of success ballast - will ensure that.

The claim was made before the TS050 HYBRIDs were given another hike in minimum weight this week. The extra 14kg is going to make life for the Toyota drivers that much tougher this weekend, so this latest rules tweak under the Equivalence of Technology only reinforces the argument put forward by Toyota Motorsport GmbH technical director Pascal Vasselon.

But should Toyota win on Sunday and avenge its only 'defeat' of the 2018/19 WEC superseason - when both TS050s were excluded in post-race scrutineering - its job will become harder again at round two at Fuji in October.

Prior to the addition of those 14kg, Vasselon was predicting that the success handicaps should have slowed the TS050s sufficiently to allow one of the non-hybrid privateers to take victory by race three or four of the season. That might now have to be brought forward.

Vasselon has stressed that his prediction is a 'guesstimate' because making judgements on the pace of Toyota's privateer rivals, Rebellion Racing and the Team LNT works Ginetta squad, on the basis of pre-season WEC test at Barcelona in July isn't easy. A second reason is that the final figures of the success handicaps are still in the process of being firmed up.

When details of an idea that has so far been the subject of two votes by the LMP1 teams will be finalised still isn't entirely clear. More news has been promised this weekend.

The principles are clear, though. Each car will be handicapped according to a per kilometre time coefficient multiplied by its points advantage over the last-placed car in the championship, which will act as a reference.

One figure in the air is 0.006 seconds per point per kilometre, though Vasselon (pictured above) has been at pains to stress that this has yet to be fixed.

Using that figure, the winning car at Silverstone would be made nearly half a second slower going to Fuji - presuming the LMP1s block out the top six positions at Silverstone. Should an LMP1 car fail to finish, it would be around seven tenths.

The winning car, also presuming it had taken the pole, would be slowed in relation to the second-placed car to the tune of two tenths. The maths is actually simple: 0.006s (the per kilometre time co-efficient) multiplied by eight (the points differential between first and second positions with pole) multiplied by 4.6 (the length in kilometres of the Fuji Speedway). The exact figure is 0.221s.

Handicaps will continue to be accumulated by the cars at the head of the championship so long as the gap to the lowest-placed car in the points continues to grow. If it starts to shrink, and that's the idea, then the handicaps will start to come off.

"This kind of system doesn't allow for so much strategy. You want to win the championship by scoring points and as soon as you score points you get handicapped" Pascal Vasselon

Vasselon has suggested that there may have to be some kind of cap on the penalties.

"There would be some kind of saturation point, because we cannot make the cars three seconds slower," he says. "It would trigger other problems. We may say that we cannot compensate for more than 50 points."

Using the 0.006s coefficient, 50 points, would equate to 1.8s around the six kilometres of the Sebring International Raceway, which the WEC visits again next March.

Adding ballast is only one of the ways that the cars will be slowed. Vasselon explains that "all performance parameters" of the cars will be touched by the system. Weight, the rate of fuel flow, fuel energy allowed per lap - which have all been tinkered with under the EoT - will be subject to change. There will also be scope to play with the boost energy from the Toyota's hybrid systems.

A system that is lineal will not "trigger any strange sporting strategies", according to Vasselon.

"This kind of system doesn't allow for so much strategy," he says. "You want to win the championship by scoring points and as soon as you score points you get handicapped."

Vasselon is hinting at some of the weird scenarios thrown up by what may be termed as traditional systems of success ballast under which weight penalties are awarded on the basis of finishing position. Ending up outside of the weight-paying positions results in ballast coming off, which allows for a certain amount of gamesmanship.

Back in the early-2000s, the All-Japan GT Championship, now the SUPER GT Series, was won on three occasions by a car that didn't win a race...

All the handicaps will come off for the Le Mans championship finale next June. The ACO doesn't countenance the idea of penalties being applied to its blue-riband event and, according to Vasselon, they will not be required anyway. He argues that the EoT did its job this June. Remember, hybrid cars get more fuel per kilometre and more hybrid energy to deploy per kilometre for the regular WEC races than at the 24 Hours.

"Rebellion #3 was faster than Toyota #8," he claims. "Three times in the night it passed our car and pulled away - it was consistently faster lap on lap."

Vasselon insists the new system will be understandable to the outside world, so long as there isn't a desire to comprehend the detailed physics of how the cars are being slowed.

"What is easy to explain," he says, "is that a car will be made slower according to the gaps in the championship points."

But making a car slower doesn't necessary preclude it from winning. ORECA boss Hugues de Chaunac, whose organisation masterminds the Rebellion programme, reminds us that his partner team and Ginetta are privateers going up against a full-house factory operation.

"Everyone has to be aware that we are not at the same level as Toyota as a team," he explains.

They have the better drivers, the better structure - they are better organised.

"Even if we are faster than them, we will have to do the perfect race to beat them."

The privateers will, in the jargon of the day, have to "execute properly". But the prospect is most definitely there of Toyota being beaten in a straight fight.