How WEC's manufacturers shared honours in 2024 as Hypercar era stepped up a gear

The important silverware was split three ways this year for the first time since the 2012 rebirth of the World Endurance Championship. Porsche won the drivers’ title, Toyota took a last-gasp victory in the manufacturers’ rankings, and Ferrari claimed the big prize at the Le Mans 24 Hours. So was it honours even for three grandee marques, both historically and in the context of the 2024 campaign, competing in Hypercar?

That depends on how you assess the relative values of the trophies on offer. In terms of the championship, the drivers’ crown is the one the wider world acknowledges, though the car makers themselves put at least as high a value on the manufacturers’ title (one, perhaps more, pays its driver bonuses based upon it).

They are still trumped by Le Mans even though, with ever-more major manufacturers – BMW, Alpine and Lamborghini arrived this season – and an increasingly competitive field, a once yawning gap has closed and the 24 Hours is not the be-all and end-all that it once was. Ferrari came into the season with the avowed aim of adding a world title to its 2023 victory at the French enduro.

To win a championship, of course, consistency over the course of the season is required, and from one car if the drivers’ prize is to be taken. The line-up of Laurens Vanthoor, Kevin Estre and Andre Lotterer had that in a way that no other car crew did. The drivers of the #6 Porsche 963 LMDh won twice – in Qatar in March and then at Fuji in September – and claimed a further three podiums while never finishing out of the top six until the title was all but won.

Toyota and Ferrari couldn’t match that consistency with either of their cars, even if the former did take more wins (three) than any other factory team. Bizarrely or unusually – both are probably applicable – the Japanese manufacturer’s pair of GR010 HYBRID Le Mans Hypercars notched up only a further two podiums.

One of them came when double points were on offer at Le Mans: that was crucial in its run to the manufacturers’ title and for the championship assault from Kamui Kobayashi and Nyck de Vries, who were a close second at the Circuit de la Sarthe along with Jose Maria Lopez, who was back in harness in #7 in place of the injured Mike Conway.

Ultra-consistent all year long, the Vanthoor/Lotterer/Estre crew set the tone by winning the Qatar opener

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

This crew, the fortuitous victors at Imola in April, should have won at Interlagos in July on a day when Toyota had a clear advantage thanks to the GR010’s ability to make its tyres last on an abrasive track surface. But a fuel pump sensor issue resulted in them finishing fourth, while the #8 Toyota shared by Sebastien Buemi, Brendon Hartley and Ryo Hirakawa took the laurels.

Nil points for #7 at Fuji were the result of an attack of red mist on Kobayashi’s part when he made an opportunistic move on Matt Campbell in the #5 Porsche. The drivers’ championship was effectively lost at that moment. It ultimately mattered little that the Japanese driver and his team-mates also registered a DNF at the Bahrain finale with a high-pressure fuel pump issue.

The word ‘ultimately’ can be used there because Toyota had the pace at the season finale to steal the drivers’ title from under Porsche’s noses, just as it did the manufacturers’ crown. Buemi proved that in the #8 car over the final 90 minutes to yank that pot out of the German car maker’s grasp. Had #7 won, Kobayashi and de Vries would have been champions – for two or three hours.

Nielsen, Fuoco and Molina would have been much closer had not Ferrari endured a disastrous spring

The #6 Porsche initially finished out of the points in 11th thanks to no fewer than three penalties incurred by Vanthoor in the closing stages. It was subsequently promoted into the final points-paying position on the penalisation of the second-place #51 Ferrari driven by Antonio Giovinazzi, James Calado and Alessandro Pier Guidi.

There’s also a hypothetical case for Ferrari winning the title. The drivers of the #50 factory car – Nicklas Nielsen, Antonio Fuoco and Miguel Molina – were Porsche’s closest challengers going into the eight-hour race in Bahrain. A distant closest challenger if that’s not a contradiction in terms, given that they were 35 points adrift with only 39 up for grabs. Yet they would have been much closer had not Ferrari endured a disastrous spring.

Ferrari should have claimed 1-2 finishes with the two factory AF Corse-run 499P LMHs at Imola and Spa in May. That it didn’t in its back yard was down to an inexplicable strategic blunder when the cars were left out on slicks when rain arrived. Three weeks later, the factory Ferraris were 1-2 when the race controversially restarted following a red flag after the original scheduled finish time: the pair of 499Ps ended up only third and fourth behind the #12 Jota Porsche and #6.

The eventual top two had pitted just before the red flag and therefore gained back much of the time they lost courtesy of the safety car restart. When Ferrari was a loser, Porsche was a winner with #6. It ended up second in Italy as well as Belgium.

Poor strategy call at Imola cost Ferrari dearly, before it was victim to bad luck at Spa

Photo by: Paolo Belletti

You could say that luck was on their side, but the drivers of the #6 car and the Porsche Penske Motorsport squad always found a way to come back from adversity. The most notable example was perhaps Interlagos in July, the first race after Le Mans. They fought back from an early puncture, the result of a clash between Vanthoor and Will Stevens in the #12 Jota customer car, to finish second.

The upward trajectory of Porsche continued into 2024 after a strong finish to the previous campaign, both with the 963 and within PPM as a team – there were no operational glitches this year. Further steps were made in terms of performance and reliability. The hybrid system reliability issues of 2023 were a thing of the past thanks to winter updates in the Bosch Motorsport-supplied Motor Generator Unit, so much so that Porsche abandoned plans to introduce a new version of its 4.6-litre twin-turbo V8 that put less vibration into the bellhousing-mounted MGU.

The revised engine would have counted as an evo joker performance upgrade, Porsche said. What we didn’t know at the time was that it had taken one of the five tokens available to it over the initial five-year lifecycle of an LMDh ahead of the season. The revisions to sensors and the like of which it talked pre-season, pertinently those to measure front brake pressure, constituted one.

The other factor in PPM’s consistency was the Balance of Performance. It always gave the Porsche LMDh a fighting chance, which was not the case for Toyota and Ferrari. There were races when their LMHs were not quite in the game, most notably in Qatar for the pair of them, but also Interlagos for Ferrari and then Fuji for both again.

There was a new, more reactive system of BoP for 2024. In 2023 the BoP was based more on simulation and the potential of what a car could achieve on track rather than what it actually did. There were then flags in the sand on when the BoP could change. This time around the BoP could be altered race by race based on track performance of the myriad Hypercar machines.

A full explanation of the philosophy and process of the new protocols was never offered publicly, nor to the manufacturers. What we know is that the FIA and the Automobile Club de l’Ouest were trying to get the whole field within 0.4% of each other based on the fastest 20% of race laps, and the quickest LMH and the quickest LMDh within 0.2%.

They stated at the start of the season that cars outside of the window at the bottom end would be sped up more slowly than a hauling back of those that were too quick. Ferrari’s BoP hit for Interlagos and the time it took for WEC LMDh newcomers BMW and Alpine to be brought up to pace suggests that they stuck to their guns.

There was a new element of the BoP in 2024, which came on stream for Le Mans. The so-called Power Gain was introduced to level the acceleration profiles and top speeds of the cars. Each was given a plus or minus power adjustment above 250km/h (155mph) to that effect.

Toyota came up short with both cars at Le Mans, where #8 had looked set to win until being spun by the #51 Ferrari

Photo by: Rainier Ehrhardt

It was another tool at the disposal of the rulemakers, and one welcomed by the manufacturers. It still needed some fine-tuning on its introduction at Le Mans. A lack of straightline speed on Porsche’s part was at least part of the reason why it couldn’t take the fight to Ferrari and Toyota when push came to shove at the end of the race, even if #6 did finish less than 40s off the lead.

What in the context of 2024 were the second cars at Porsche, Toyota and Ferrari had disappointing seasons marred by misfortune. The #5 PPM entry shared by Campbell, Michael Christensen and Frederic Makowiecki ended up fifth in the points with a quartet of podiums and no wins, but crucially two retirements. Campbell’s assault from the rear at Fuji probably summed up their season.

The #8 Toyota was nowhere in the championship until the Bahrain victory propelled it to fourth in the points. Their season was also characterised by a clash that was no fault of their own. Hartley’s late-race coming-together at Le Mans with Pier Guidi robbed them of a shot of victory – the smart money was on #8 at that point – and left them fifth at the finish.

Arguably Jota was at its most competitive in Bahrain, where it was deprived of a clear shot at victory when Stevens sustained a puncture at the final restart in a clash with an LMGT3 car

The #51 Ferrari ended up way down the points in eighth. Third place at Le Mans was as good as it got for Giovinazzi, Calado and Pier Guidi, and the five-second stop-and-hold the last-named received for his clash with Hartley didn’t affect their result. The loss of second place last time out in Bahrain for a tyre allocation infringement, which followed retirements at Austin and Fuji in September, encapsulates a season in which they were generally a match for the sister car.

Ferrari’s 499P finally got a victory on the board away from Le Mans. The satellite entry run on a customer basis by AF triumphed in the hands Robert Kubica, Yifei Ye and Robert Shwartzman at Austin. It was their only podium of the year, though they were genuine contenders at Le Mans before a hybrid system failure in the 20th hour.

The AF car wasn’t the first privateer competing in the FIA World Cup to take a victory, of course. The British Jota team had triumphed at Spa with the #12 Porsche driven by Stevens and Callum Ilott as a duo in the absence of regular team-mate Norman Nato, who was on Formula E duty.

There was clearly an element of good fortune, but Jota was a contender on and off through the season. Arguably it was at its most competitive in Bahrain, where it was deprived of a clear shot at victory when Stevens sustained a puncture at the final restart in a clash with an LMGT3 car.

Jota profited from the red flag at Spa to take first privateer win of the Hypercar era

Photo by: Emanuele Clivati | AG Photo

Jota still took 1-2 in the privateers’ rankings, #12 finishing ahead of the #38 shared by Jenson Button, Phil Hanson and Oliver Rasmussen. The AF Ferrari was third and Proton Competition’s Porsche fourth. The latter’s best result was fifth at Spa, a race it could have won with Julien Andlauer and Neel Jani.

Cadillac was the big disappointment of 2023. It was fourth in the performance pecking order but ended up nowhere in both championship classifications. There were a series of strong qualifying showings from Alex Lynn, who followed up on a front row qualification (before a penalty) at Le Mans with pole at Fuji aboard the solo Ganassi-run Caddy V-Series.R.

What he and full-season co-driver Earl Bamber didn’t do was translate those lofty grid positions into anything better than a fourth-place finish at Austin. (The same result at the Qatar opener was lost due to a homologation infringement.)

Yet the General Motors marque’s entry in which Lynn and Bamber drove as a duo in the six-hour races could have achieved much more, including at Le Mans where it was in the mix with Ferrari and Toyota with three or so hours to go. After the final safety car, the regular WEC entry in which Ganassi IndyCar star Alex Palou joined Lynn and Bamber faded to seventh. Ganassi, in its last year with Cadillac, admitted that the car had lost downforce as a result of a gaping hole in the underfloor. It didn’t elaborate on the cause.

Elsewhere, Lynn and Bamber might have been on the podium at Spa and Fuji. Both times the Kiwi made mistakes that put the car out of the race, most dramatically in Belgium when an infinitesimal misjudgement resulted in the biggest of accidents on the Kemmel Straight that caused the red flag.

Best of the rest, in terms of points scored, was Alpine on its return to the top class of the WEC with its new A424 LMDh. It came out on top in a close battle for fourth in the manufacturers’ standings with BMW and Peugeot, which like the Renault marque each scored a solitary podium in the closing stages of the campaign.

Alpine made all the normal noises about staying humble in its learning year and the importance of maintaining an upward trajectory through the season. The curve was definitely in the right direction, with the exception of a downward blip at Le Mans when both its Signatech-run cars were out inside six hours with the same valve train issue. It admitted that it was a known problem, that a fix wouldn’t come on stream until 2025, and that it could manage the issue in the meantime.

It most definitely did that. Over the final three races Alpine was there or thereabouts, the result of that upward curve and some help from the BoP being a pair of fourths that sandwiched a first podium at Fuji.

BMW and Alpine both enjoyed their best days of 2024 in Fuji by ascending the rostrum - though the French marque edged the tussle for fourth in the manufacturers' standings

Photo by: Andreas Beil

Mick Schumacher hauled the #36 Alpine he shared with Matthieu Vaxiviere and Nicolas Lapierre into the top three in the closing stages in Japan, though it was the sister #35 entry driven by Charles Milesi, Ferdinand Habsburg and Jules Gounon that was the quicker car. It would have been ahead had not the first-named received a penalty for tapping an LMGT3 car into a spin. A follow-up podium went west in Bahrain when Milesi, now in #36 after Lapierre stepped into a management role, was penalised after hitting the #50 Ferrari.

BMW was pipped to fifth in the points, though its battle with Alpine would have gone the other way but for safety cars in Bahrain. The #15 BMW M Hybrid V8 shared by Dries Vanthoor, Raffaele Marciello and Marco Wittmann was ahead, but the WRT team hadn’t gambled on late cautions, unlike Alpine. With more fresh tyres at its disposal, the French car came through.

This wasn’t the maiden season of the M Hybrid V8, but it was in the context of the WEC. WRT was still on a learning curve with the car, and so too were the rulemakers as they worked out how much to nibble it up to the performance of the frontrunners. BMW was nowhere in Qatar, but rebounded with a sixth place for #20 shared by Rene Rast, Robin Frijns and Sheldon van der Linde second time out at Imola.

As good as the new Peugeot was at the final races, it wasn’t a genuine podium contender. Yet the old car was in Qatar

Vanthoor was quickest in opening qualifying at Le Mans, but come the race neither car saw dawn. That was the result of two accidents, one of its own making when Frijns went off at the Ford Chicane, the other when Vanthoor was tagged by Kubica on the Mulsanne Straight.

By the end of the season, however, BMW was genuinely in the mix. It was nose-to-tail with the winning Porsche after the final safety car at Fuji, but didn’t quite have the pace to give it a run for its money.

Peugeot wasn’t far behind BMW in the manufacturers’ standings, a disappointing result for a marque entering its second full campaign. There were mitigating circumstances, however, because from round two it had what was effectively a new car. Not in terms of its chassis and powertrain, but in the way it went about its business on the race track.

The avant-garde aerodynamics of the original 9X8 LMH were dispensed with when the French manufacturer came to the same conclusion reached by Toyota at the end of its inaugural campaign with the GR010 in 2021: the car was compromised by the equal size wheels and tyres all round.

Overhauled 9X8 took third after Ferrari's penalty in Bahrain, but the result owed much to tyre gamble and safety cars rather than outright pace

Photo by: Andreas Beil

The new version, known as the 9X8 2024, represented a change in concept: there was a more or less conventional rear wing as the weight distribution was pushed back in line with the shift to the narrower front and wider rear tyres. The car had to be learned – and the changes assessed by the rulemakers for the BoP – and wasn’t an immediate improvement.

It started to come good at the end of the season, the #93 car shared by Mikkel Jensen, Jean-Eric Vergne and Nico Muller twice crossing the line in fourth, the second of those finishes last time out in Bahrain becoming a podium on the penalisation of the #51 Ferrari. Those positions owed much to a strategic gamble by the in-house Peugeot Sport team paying off. It saved tyres for the end of the race in the hope of a safety car. The hope was fulfilled, which explained Jensen’s end-of-race ascent of the order both times.

As good as the new Peugeot was at the final races, it wasn’t a genuine podium contender. Yet the old car was in Qatar. A machine that generated most of its downforce from the underside of the car worked on the ultra-flat and smooth Losail circuit with a helping hand from the BoP. Peugeot would have been second with #93 but for a late fuelling issue.

Peugeot Sport technical director Olivier Jansonnie talked about being backed into a corner of the BoP with the old car, but the final changes to weights and power figures for Bahrain appeared to push the 9X8 into a similar position: it was up at maximum power of 520kW and only 1kg off the minimum weight of 1030kg. That suggests that it needs – and will surely be given – yet more jokers.

Lamborghini was the other new manufacturer to join the LMDh ranks. It fielded a solo car in the WEC with the Iron Lynx squad and then two at Le Mans when the sister entry taking in the IMSA SportsCar Championship enduros (apart from Daytona) joined it, yet barely troubled the scorers. Tenth place for the full-season WEC car driven by Mirko Bortolotti, Daniil Kvyat and Edoardo Mortara after a reliable run at Le Mans was a decent result, but that was as good as it got for the Italian manufacturer. It was never in the game with the overweight SC63.

There was a new garagiste on the grid in 2024. Isotta Fraschini, a relaunch of a marque once synonymous with Hollywood extravagance, had all the right ingredients in terms of technical partners but not the drivers to match. The Tipo 6 Competizione LMH developed by Michelotto Engineering disappeared without showing any form after Interlagos following a split between the manufacturer and the Duqueine team.

Lamborghini barely made an impression during its first season in the WEC, with tenth at Le Mans its best result

Photo by: Alexander Trienitz

Round by round

Qatar 1812Km (10 hours)
Hypercar: Estre/Vanthoor/Lotterer
LMGT3: Bachler/Sturm/Malykhin

Porsche dominates over a 10-hour boreathon in which Ferrari and Toyota aren’t in the game. The #6 car is never headed from late in the second hour and wins by over 30s, even with a late unscheduled stop to deal with some minor damage. Peugeot misses out on second when #93 runs out of fuel with a lap and a half to go. Jota splits the factory Penske cars in a Porsche lockout of the podium positions.

Imola 6 Hours
Hypercar: Kobayashi/de Vries/Conway
LMGT3: Farfus/Gelael/Leung

Ferrari dominates on home ground in front of a massive and partisan crowd until leaving all three 499Ps on track in increasingly wet conditions. The gaffe, blamed on a breakdown in communications, allows Toyota to claim an unlikely victory ahead of the #6 Porsche. The factory Ferraris end up third and fourth, #50 ahead of #51. The #8 Toyota’s low-key start to its title defence continues with fifth.

Spa 6 Hours
Hypercar: Ilott/Stevens
LMGT3: Lietz/Schuring/Shahin

It’s Ferrari to the fore again. The factory cars are running 1-2 when red flags fly courtesy of the multi-car accident trigged by Bamber. Barrier repairs stretch beyond the scheduled finish time, but the race restarts to run its full duration. The #12 Jota Porsche and #6 pit just before the reds and, with a safety car restart, move to the front when everyone else stops. Ilott has the measure of Estre on run to the flag.

Le Mans 24 Hours
Hypercar: Nielsen/Fuoco/Molina
LMGT3: Lietz/Schuring/Shahin

Nielsen holds on to win after another dramatic Ferrari vs Toyota dogfight. An open door after #50’s penultimate stop brings him back into the pits early, which means major fuel saving over the final laps. The Dane hangs on to make it two out of two for the 499P at Le Mans, crossing the line 14s to the good. Ferrari makes it a 1-3 with #51, which is involved in a controversial incident that removes the #8 Toyota from contention.

It wasn't the faster of the Toyotas, but the #8 crew prevailed in Brazil after trouble hit the sister car

Photo by: Toyota Racing

Sao Paulo (Interlagos) 6 Hours
Hypercar: Buemi/Hartley/Hirakawa
LMGT3: Bachler/Sturm/Malykhin

Toyota dominates to take its second win of the year, high temperatures on race day playing to its strengths on tyre degradation. This time the victory goes to #8, though the #7 is the quicker of the Toyotas but ends up fourth after a sensor problem. The Japanese manufacturer’s winning margin is over a minute from Porsche #6. Ferrari salvages something with fifth and sixth for the two factory cars.

Lone Star (Austin) 6 Hours
Hypercar: Kubica/Ye/Shwartzman
LMGT3: Riberas/Mancinelli/James

Ferrari is back in the hunt, though this time with the customer AF entry. It leads for much of the first half of the race but looks like it’s going to finish behind the #7 Toyota. A penalty for Kobayashi, who is adjudged to have not slowed sufficiently under waved yellows, swaps the order. The #50 Ferrari takes third on a day when it can’t match its yellow sister car or #51, which retires with a driveline issue.

Fuji 6 Hours
Hypercar: Estre/Vanthoor/Lotterer
LMGT3: Rigon/Castellacci/Flohr

Estre and his team-mates put one hand on the title with a near-faultless performance on the track that provided Porsche’s breakthrough in 2023. BMW takes its only podium of the year, with #15 ahead of the #36 Alpine. Toyota takes home a solitary point for 10th with #8 after a drivethrough. #7 is crashed out by Kobayashi, while Ferrari endures a disaster. Kubica hits Giovinazzi at Turn 1 and #50 fades to ninth.

Bahrain 8 Hours
Hypercar: Buemi/Hartley/Hirakawa
LMGT3: Rovera/Mann/Heriau

Porsche takes the drivers’ title on a day when its rivals don’t trouble the scorers – Estre and his team-mates barely do that. But a stunning drive from Buemi, who goes from 10th to first and on to a winning margin of nearly half a minute, seals Toyota the manufacturers’ crown by just two points. Campbell has nothing for him in the closing stages. Peugeot makes it onto the podium for the first time since Monza 2023.

Storming drive from Buemi in Bahrain helped clinch victory and manufacturers' crown for Toyota

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images