Seven things to watch in the 2021 World Endurance Championship

The absence of boutique sportscar manufacturer Glickenhaus means Toyota will face limited Hypercar opposition in the World Endurance Championship curtain-raiser at Spa this weekend, but there will still be plenty to look out for as the new era for sportscar racing takes its first tentative steps.

PLUS: What to expect from sportscar racing's bold new Hypercar era

The theory was the LMP2s have been slowed for the new season to ensure they’re a suitable distance behind the Hypercars. But the reality is the Toyotas have been outpaced throughout the pre-season prologue test and practice so far, suggesting an unexpected battle for the win - and don't forget an LMP2 has only featured on the overall podium four times since the WEC's rebirth. Toyota's appeal for a further tweak of the performance rules has so far been unsuccessful. 

Despite the slim field in the top class, there is plenty of intrigue elsewhere on the grid, with a top team in the GT racing world making its long-awaited entry into the prototype arena and the prospect of LMP2 switching to a single tyre supplier set to shake up the competitive order.

And, while the absence of Aston Martin from the GTE Pro battle will be felt, a stalwart of the IMSA scene is making a welcome return to European competition after skipping the Le Mans 24 Hours last year.

PLUS: How Aston Martin Racing scaled new heights in the Prodrive era 

Here's what you need to know as battle commences.

1. A big-name GT team in the prototype ranks

#31 Team WRT ORECA in 2021 WEC Prologue

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

WRT is pretty much the benchmark in the GT3 arena. Since the Belgian team was set up for 2010, it’s won just about everything worth winning with Audi, the Spa and Nurburgring twice-around-the-clock enduros and the Bathurst 12 Hour included. Now, it has expanded full-time into prototypes after a couple of years dovetailing its GT programmes with the DTM. It’s difficult not to make the team one of the pre-season favourites in LMP2.

Team boss Vincent Vosse doesn’t see it like that, even after victory for the team’s European Le Mans Series squad in April with a line-up including Robert Kubica. He only admits to much more modest aspirations. 

“We’re aiming by the end of the season to be the kind of team that a driver would want to join for next year,” says the Belgian, who is a veteran of six starts at the Le Mans 24 Hours. “I want to win, of course, but we are not expecting to win. We are here to learn through the season.”

And there is still stuff still to learn, Barcelona victory or not, reckons Vosse: “I was a bit surprised by the result, which didn’t show the true picture. We had the pace, but our pitstops were not the best. They were average, but we didn’t make any bad pitstops. We won because the race ran smoothly for us and it didn’t for our rivals.”

The rhetoric may be conservative, but the line-up Vosse has assembled for his solo ORECA-Gibson 07 in the WEC is proof of the team’s intent. He has brought in Virgin Formula E man Robin Frijns, a driver to whom he gave a sportscar break back in 2015, to lead the attack. The Dutchman shares with ex-DTM regular Ferdinand Habsburg and sometime Super Formula racer Charles Milesi, who is the silver-rated driver in the line-up. 

It’s an impressive crew for the debutant squad, one that a rival team boss suggested gives WRT nowhere to hide. 

2. A (prototype) star in a reasonably priced (GT) car

Neel Jani at 2021 WEC Prologue

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

There’s a new, yet familiar face among the GT specialists on the grid in the GTE Pro class. Neel Jani returns to the wheel of a Porsche in the WEC three years on from the end of its LMP1 programme with the 919 Hybrid, a car in which he won Le Mans and the WEC title in 2016. It’s an interesting call by the German manufacturer to put him alongside Kevin Estre in one of the Manthey-run 911 RSRs, one that’s clearly motivated by what is to come in 2023, when it will be back in the top division with a new LMDh prototype. 

Jani, for all his prototype experience, isn’t a total stranger to GT machinery. Back in 2010, he contested half a dozen rounds of the FIA GT1 World Championship aboard a Matech Ford GT, and before that had a one-off at the wheel of a Lamborghini in the FIA GT Championship. 

The Swiss joined Porsche’s GT roster at last November’s Sebring 12 Hours IMSA SportsCar Championship finale and, after some proper testing over the winter, believes he’s now up to speed. But he reckons he still has a lot to learn about the new discipline. 

“It feels like I’m back at the beginning of my career,” says Jani, who returned to the Rebellion Racing LMP1 squad with which he started out in prototypes for the 2018-19 WEC superseason. “I’m well prepared, but it’s always going to be tough going up against the GT pros who’ve driven these cars for years and years. 

“There are going to be things that I only find out when I get out there in the races. I haven’t even done a double stint on the tyres yet.”

3. A Corvette on the grid in Europe

#63 Corvette Racing Chevrolet Corvette C8.R: Antonio Garcia, Oliver Gavin

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

Chevrolet has contested a smattering of WEC rounds away from Le Mans in the past, but never in Europe. In fact, Spa this weekend will be the first time that its Corvette Racing team has run a car on European asphalt, Le Mans excepted, since a Michelin tyre test at Misano more than a dozen years ago when it borrowed a C6.R GT1 from one of its European customers. 

The appearance of a solo Corvette C8.R in Belgium for Oliver Gavin and Antonio Garcia to drive together – a first for two great mates – is all about preparing for Le Mans, where the new mid-engined car will be racing for the first time this year after Corvette Racing’s withdrawal in 2020. There’s probably been a bit of political coercion from WEC promoter the Automobile Club de l’Ouest along the way, too.

“It’s a good warm-up for Le Mans,” says Gavin, who stepped down from the team’s full-time line-up at the end of last year’s IMSA SportsCar Championship. “It gives the team a chance to get its head back around WEC rules. It is very different to IMSA, no doubt. Every year I went to Le Mans with the team there was always a minor panic, something the team has missed or something the scrutineers don’t like.”

The C8.R wasn’t competitive on its WEC debut at the Austin round of the 2019-20 campaign in February of last year. The car was given what might be described as a conservative Balance of Performance. This time around, Gavin is hopeful that the ’Vette will be allowed to stretch its legs.

“We’re all keeping our fingers crossed,” he says. “We want to show up and be in the mix. Running around half a second or a second off the pace isn’t what any team or driver wants.”

The Spa appearance could be a portent of things to come for Corvette Racing. It has hinted that it intends to play a more active role in the WEC in the future: next year its C8.R will be legislated out of the IMSA SportsCar Championship on the introduction of the GT Daytona Pro class for GT3 machinery in place of GT Le Mans.

4. Two all-female line-ups

Manuela Gostner at 2021 WEC Prologue

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

The all-female line-ups in the Signatech-run Richard Mille Racing LMP2 ORECA and the Iron Lynx Ferrari team’s ‘Iron Dames’ GTE Am entry mean there will be a record number of women racing full-time in an FIA championship this year.

Alfa Romeo Formula 1 test driver Tatiana Calderon, Sophia Florsch and Beitske Visser share the Signatech ORECA, while Katherine Legge, who was originally part of the Mille team backed by the FIA’s Women in Motorsport initiative, drives with Rahel Frey and Manuela Gostner in one of the two Iron Lynx Ferrari 488 GTE Evos.

5. New qualifying format

The old aggregate qualifying introduced back in year two of the reborn WEC in 2013 is no more. A system based on fastest laps of a pair of drivers, initially two for each and then one from 2015, has been ditched to bring the rest of the series in line with Le Mans and its new-for-2020 Hyperpole session for the fastest six cars from each class in an initial qualifying on the first day of running.

What’s taken its place is hardly revolutionary. It’s now just one driver against the clock. The only twist is that in GTE Am it’s the bronze-rated driver who has to set the time.

6. In case you didn't notice - a new-look calendar...

#36 Signatech Alpine A470 Gibson: Gustavo Menezes, Romain Dumas, Matt Rao

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

The WEC’s so-called ‘winter season’ schedule has been binned after a solitary season: it was an inevitable casualty of the world health crisis. Don’t forget that the current campaign was originally due to begin last September, but the 2019-20 championship didn’t actually finish until November after a COVID-enforced rejig.

We’re now back to a schedule run over a calendar year with the Le Mans 24 Hours at its centre. Well, almost. The French enduro has been pushed back to August, making it the fourth of the six events rather than the third.

The reduced six-round schedule – down from the previous eight races – reflects the economic uncertainties of our times. But it’s already taken a pounding as a result of restrictions on international travel. The WEC had been due to kick off with the Sebring 1000 Miles in March, but that was replaced by an eight-hour event at the Algarve Circuit initially scheduled for the first weekend of April.

This weekend’s Spa fixture became the opening round when Le Mans was pushed back, and then Algarve took the 24 Hours’ traditional slot in the middle weekend of June. It’s been difficult to keep up sometimes.

It does look certain, however, that world championship endurance racing will belatedly return to Monza in July. The Italian venue, which was scheduled as the second round of the original 2020-21 campaign last autumn, will be hosting its first such event since Peugeot and Toyota 3.5-litre Group C cars duked it out in what was known as the Sportscar World Championship back in 1992.

7. ... And a new man in charge

The sometimes autocratic Gerard Neveu left the employ of Le Mans Endurance Management, the ACO subsidiary that runs the WEC as well as the ELMS, at the end of last year. His replacement as chief executive officer is Frederic Lequien, another Frenchman. Spa will be the newcomer’s first race in the hot seat, so it’s difficult to judge what effect the change of leadership will have on the championship just yet.

WEC president Frederic Lequien, IMSA President John Doonan, and ACO President Pierre Fillon

Photo by: Michael L. Levitt / Motorsport Images