What WEC needs to get right amid success handicaps debate

No one can begrudge Ferrari its title double in Bahrain. No one with petrol in their veins, at least. The Italian manufacturer’s return to the pinnacle of sportscar racing after a 50-year absence has been one of the most compelling stories of the past few years. Its first world title at this level since 1972 is the thing we are all sure to remember from the 2025 season. Because it’s not going to be the quality or ferocity of the racing. Nor a great rivalry that helped define Ferrari’s season.

That would have been the icing on the cake for everyone involved in the WEC, Ferrari included. Sure there were four crews in with a chance of the drivers’ crown going into last weekend’s finale in the Middle East and a trio of marques bidding for the manufacturers’ prize. But both end-of-season trophies were Ferrari’s to lose.

But more significantly what the 2025 WEC lacked for me was jeopardy. When we woke up on race day morning at the majority of WEC rounds this year we could have comfortably predicted the race winner. Think about it, Ferrari had a significant advantage first time out in Qatar way back in February that stretched through to its home race at Imola in April. Spa was less clear-cut, but it still made the slight edge it maintained pay in the Ardennes in May.

The Le Mans 24 Hours was pretty much a Ferrari walk-over, even if the second-placed Porsche finished only 14s in arrears of the winning car. On another day it could have trailed home down in fourth behind a 1-2-3 for the Prancing Horse. And not necessarily with the yellow satellite entry from AF Corse out front.

Cadillac had things all its own way around Interlagos as the second, post-Le Mans leg of the WEC kicked off in July. As for Bahrain last weekend, well, you could have bet the farm on Toyota doing the business.

So six of the eight races were more or less foregone conclusions. And the ones that weren’t, Austin and Fuji in September, threw up unlikely winners because they were largely chaotic affairs, the former because it was wet, the latter because of the run of yellow-flag interruptions. That was the only time we got any of that good old jeopardy.

Outright unpredictability only struck when outside influences struck to shake up the order

Photo by: FIAWEC - DPPI

That means something is wrong with a championship in which the playing field is meant to be levelled to such an extent that the outcome of the race is decided by pure execution out on track over six, eight, 10 or 24 hours. The playing field was far from level in 2025 and that’s clearly a problem for the championship.

It wasn’t just that Ferrari had such an advantage over the first half of the campaign. There’s an argument that we should take our collective hats off to the boys and girls at Maranello because they made significant strides with the 499P Le Mans Hypercar over the winter and went racing with a car that was ‘bopped’ to its performances at the back end of ’24. It took three races — the period over which the BoP was calculated, at least initially, this year — to work itself out.

But that doesn’t explain, say, Toyota’s woes over the majority of the season. It was never in the mix until Bahrain. Witness the fact that the championship finale was the only race from which it went home with any kind of silverware this year.

Something has to change. There’s plenty that is right with the WEC right now, there has to be with the unprecedented level of manufacturer participation. But there’s also a lot that is wrong

The question that needs to be asked is whether the WEC took a retrograde step with the BoP in 2025? The answer has to be yes. And the problem needs to be fixed with some urgency. The series has eight manufacturers in Hypercar with more coming, so the product is fundamentally amazing. But right now it is not living up to its potential.

As I have written before, I’m not a fan of success handicaps, which potentially could be introduced as an adjunct to the BoP that may or may not be in place for next season. They are anti-competitive to my mind, more so than the BoP.

But I do have a sneaking suspicion that we are asking too much of the BoP, that no system can be as perfect as to ensure that eight manufacturers - or perhaps just a good proportion of them - can go into any given race with a chance of victory. There is an argument that a less all-encompassing and invasive BoP system combined with success handicaps could do the job.

Could a less restrictive combination of BoP and success handicaps prove successful?

Photo by: Andreas Beil

But that is to overlook the fact that a system of handicapping cars based on race results is as much about keeping the championships open to the death as spicing up the racing. There are plenty of examples down the years of where the old school way of doing things with ballast had a negative impact on the latter.

Some suggest that the provision for success handicaps in the 2026 sporting regulations is some kind of insurance policy, something that will only be introduced if there is a consensus that the BoP cannot do the job required. We can’t be sure what is going to happen, because the idea has so far only been talked about by the governing bodies, the FIA and the Automobile Club de l’Ouest, and the manufacturers in broad brushstroke principles.

But one thing I do know is that something has to change. There’s plenty that is right with the WEC right now, there has to be with the unprecedented level of manufacturer participation. But there’s also a lot that is wrong.

When the time comes to write my post-Bahrain column next year, I need to be talking about the great racing, some of that much required jeopardy I didn’t witness over the course of the current season. Otherwise the WEC once again won’t have delivered on all that is right, all that is good.

Solving this issue could take the WEC to a new level

Photo by: James Moy Photography via Getty Images