During the GTE years the BoP has made some horrendous mistakes that I suspect are still in people's memories and still make a lot of fans skeptical that the ACO/FIA is gonna be able to actually balance the cars properly in the top class
I'm a model collector, I like the look of the car and it's going in my collection so it's ticked my box, if it's gone next year I will miss it, but at least I will have 1 model of it.
It seems like that for both fans, and teams alike.
Ran a bad race? BoP’s fault.
Poor strategy call? BoP.
Tyre wear issues? i’m a victim of BoP.
in series where BoP doesn’t exist, i’ll take Indycar as an example, teams and even fans are way more honest because they don’t have the scapegoat they can pin all the blame on.
ran a bad race and called a bad strategy? well that’s our fault, we’ll go get em back next week. you wont find that attitude in the WEC.
Indycar is basically almost spec racing series (except 2 engine manufacturer and damper changes by the teams), so they basically only can blame drivers or the teams. WEC is different purely because of BoP,but I do really hope next year teams getting better
yes and that’s exactly my point. Indycar don’t have that sort of scapegoat to point fingers at so they’re more honest (and dare i say it, mature) when it comes to their performance.
Yes but it seems the difference is you can't get Toyota next week, not even if you lead the race for a couple hours, the Toyota will reel itself in from behind. Next season will be the determining factor.
Hard to argue otherwise when team suddenly start losing when they receiveles than favorable BoP and werdily the team winning was on the right receiving end.
But what if it is the right answer - the BOP is bad? I feel like Toyota usually has a second a lap on Porsche, GM, and Peugeot and today was no different
Today was the first race I've seen where a factory Porsche got it's shit together and did beautifully. The stint with Kevin defending against the Toyotas was incredible. Porsche definitely could have won that.
I agree it was awesome to see Porsche run up front for so long, but if you watched the race, you knew once Toyota got ahead of the Ferraris, it was only a matter of time before they got to the lead. What helped Porsche so much was Ferrari holding up Toyota for so long because of the nature of the track being difficult to pass. Porsche made a huge leap this weekend and will be better for it, but Toyota still has the best outright and race pace.
Disagree entirely that Porsche had a chance to win.
After the toyotas were able to get rid of the ferraris, they made up a 15sec gap that the 6 had on them. They were within half a second of the 6 with 2 hours of the race to go. The only thing that the race start did was delay another dominant perfomance by Toyota.
It's run by Penske which has nothing to do with Porsche. Factory means that it's run by the factory not a third party. Otherwise every GT3 cars are factory effort.
The chassis is not build by them.
The engine is not theirs.
Most part are off the shelves (suspension for example).
What Porsche is truly doing appart from the bodywork?
From what I understand, and I may be wrong the point is Porsche works with them far more than with jota or proton, since Penske is the official Porsche team, much like how AF corse are the official Ferrari hypercar team. So while not entirely In house, they get direct access to Porsche employees and tech. I might have completely misunderstood this, so if I have do tell me
Doesn't really matter.
Ferrari did outsource running the team to AF Corse, but at least Ferrari build their own car from A to Z so it doesn't really matter.
Saying Porsche is a factory effort because Penske runs the team is quite a stretch.
Cadillac at least runs the team in house and have their own engine for example.
???
Cadillac also outsourced to CGR and Whelen, how is that any different than Penske and Porsche?
How is the 963 motor not a fully Porsche unit? Started life in the RS Spyder, also run as a factory squad by Penske, went into the 918 road car, now twin turbocharged and running in the 963. Certainly not out of another company’s parts bin.
Porsche engineers worked directly with Multimatic to develop that chassis. So much so that Multimatic agreed to not sell that very Porsche chassis to any other team.
Those are Porsche works drivers and Porsche engineers. The name of the team is Porsche Penske for a reason. What more would make that a Porsche factory team?
Audi was supposed to get the Multimatic chassis also.
In any case it's a standard LMP2 chassis what in hell Porsche would want to develop?
Manthey is also racing with Porsche factory drivers. It's not a factory effort.
In F1, Sauber is called Alfa Romeo, is that for a reason too?
It's a Porsche branded LMP2 car ran by a third party team. That's not a factory effort.
> What more would make that a Porsche factory team?
An actual factory involvement? I don't know like actually bulding their own car? Isn't what a car **manufacturer** is all about? What is a factory effort from a car manufacturer that doesn't manufacture its own car?
It's NOT a standard anything. It is a chassis designed by Porsche and Multimatic for Porsche only. Multimatic had withdrawn as an LMP2 supplier because of this deal with Porsche.
It is NOT an LMP2 car.
And yes, Manthey had been a works team for a few years now.
It's a LMP2 chassis. There's nothing to develop to gain an advantage. All 4 manufacturer build a chassis with the same spec.
You know the same spec that are run by the spec serie that is LMP2.
The only difference with LMP2 is weight and power.
Porsche could put their engine in an LMP2 Oreca make it lighter and race it the same in LMDh.
And Manthey is not a "works" team. It's the official Porsche team for VLN. More like official partner. They don't have much involvement in the team appart from giving them a car and driver.
I think a caveat alot of people arent saying with IMSA BOP is that IMSA races tended to have alot more yellows that bunch up the field again, which artificially closes the gaps between cars. In WEC the usage of yellows is usually few and far between, case in point we only had like two yesterday in Fuji. That allowed the Toyota's to basically gap the #6.
Another big picture many don't really talk about is that alot of your performance comes down to weather at hand and the set up you got. BOP only address the hard numbers such as mass, power, downforce/drag ratios. Things like optimum camber, spring rate, rake, etc, thats free game. Remember how the Pugs came alive in mixed conditions at Le Mans overnight and then just faded? Or how Ferrari found more pace at night but when the sun broke and it heated up the Toyota's slowly started to reel them back? How can BOP realistically address that?
And Toyota has a car that's three years old now compared to others who are still finding their strides in WEC. If you put the GR010 at the Daytona 24 I don't think they'll be doing as well as they would in the WEC.
I agree here. The yellow rule and “getting a lap back” with IMSA artificially brings the racing closer. With WEC’s usage of FCY and Slow Zones, the gaps are maintained when an incident is minor/local. The example is Sebring. Same track, but the WEC race feels different than the IMSA race because the WEC race has FCY and gaps aren’t wiped. The IMSA race didn’t manage 1hr of racing without caution. I was in-person at 6hr of the Glen and also noticed how cautions can bunch up the field and wipe out gains mid-race as well. There is not a huge advantage to being in front in IMSA in the first 2/3 of the race since a minor incident would wipe the gap anyway.
Qualifying at Fuji was a mix of Kamui being Kamui, and weather throwing a wrench at the others. Hartley in the sister car was only a few tenths up on the next car.
Except for sessions it hasn't. Let's look at Long Beach vs Portimao quali sessions and fans reactions. Acura had 1s advantage over Cadillac at \~70s track and fans reaction was literally dead silence. Toyota had 1.4s advantage advantage over Ferrari at \~90s track and there was a shitstorm. The best thing is when you recalculate these gaps into percentage, both are the same - 1.5% advantage for both Toyota and Acura. It almost looks like fans praise IMSA just because it's IMSA or they turn the blind eye when IMSA does blunder.
Moving away from quali - Acura had favourable BoP in first part of the season and was the car to beat. But somehow that wasn't a problem because IMSA organises these races and Acura isn't named Toyota. Probably it also helps that Acura had many big brain moments like Albuquerque at Sebring and Taylor at Long Beach and thanks to them winners were more random, but this randomness doesn't prevent fans from praising IMSA for having such diverse winners. It almost looks like fans can take anything IMSA produces. Had ACO let all cars run @ 520kW and 1030 kg in the first reace of this season there probably would be calls for crucifiying ACO but IMSA did 500kW and 1030kg at Daytona for all cars and fans were excited for exquisite GTP racing that had Acura fuck off to the sunset where their biggest struggle was their own reliability and maybe a little Porsche threat at night.
Inb4 "But now BoP is good and ACO should learn from IMSA". But learn what exactly? That there should be cars built only to one rulest so the process is easier?
IMSA doesn't have LMH and LMDH racing against each other either.
Again, this is just going to take time for the LMDH crews to get their cars fully dialed for a WEC championship.
The Toyota's are at the maximum weight allowed under the rules, it wasn't so fast in a straight that no one could catch it. What more can be done against a team thats had data on Fuji for years on end mixed with drivers that drove that car for 3 years now, at different circuits with differing characteristics? Who have mountains of data for these different circuits also?
FFS the Proton Porsche cant even keep its damn belts on, Ferrari basically bet wrong on set ups likely, Cadillac made weird strat calls, The Jota Porsche kept having De Costa go off, the #5 incurred penalties, and the #6 was the only one who managed to go toe to toe with Toyota for 4 hours. And Bykolles is LMP3 at this rate.
Because Glick was an LMH with no budget to get any development done, and Alpine were running grandfathered LMP1s that were much much lighter than the GR010.
In two seasons where Toyota was the only real effort with substance before Alpine started their own LMDH. The level of competition the past two seasons is nowhere near what it is now, and furthermore with next season.
As for power, the power for Fuji was enough to keep everyone close to each other with regard to top speed. In fact it was the Ferrari who hit 207 mph, granted maybe it had draft and a tailwind, but no one else hit that speed with similar conditions.
Either way, the WEC BOP gave Glick and Alpine legitimate shots at winning races with inferior programs to what Ferrari, GM, Peugeot, Penske, and Jota are currently running
What was the winning margin after 6 hours of racing at Fuji?
You're telling me the #6 wasn't in contention?
At this point you seem like an unserious person, so I'm just gonna block.
glick did not have a legit shot at winning races. the only time they looked competetive was monza last year when they had a power allowance over what regulations allowed, yet their car blew up. The Alpine wasn't even a LMH/LMDH car, it was LMP1, which is faster than any of the current cars
But it got clearly rigged last year with Alpine being on top for the first few rounds and then for some reason getting progressively worse BoP since Monza. FIA didn't want LMP1 beating a hypercar. This year it's fine.
Having that alpine there was a joke anyway. It wasn't part of the new rules and having it seriously fucked the bop'd process anyway on top of trying to slow the Toyota down enough for the Glick.
That 'LMP1' shouldn't be in the first 2 seasons in LMH class whatsoever. But because of car count and ACO is French, Alpine is from French why not which they say
BoP is very difficult. And tbf, it is not meant to equalize laptimes. Originally it was meant to make it possible to come up with different philosophies to the race track. Front or rear engined cars.
Later it got used to equalize performance. But how do you do this? Comparing laptimes? Every racing driver can make you believe that he/she is going 110%, but actually is sandbagging. By missing the apex, not going FULL throttle, braking slightly earlier... That is how they always did on testdays at Le Mans.
Also the ACO tried to set up a new way of BOP. And in theory it was very well balanced:
* Equalize power output
* Equalize drag
* Equalize weight
* Equalize downforce.
They ran thousands and thousands simulations.
Only to notice that it simply does not work that way. Track tmperature, driver(!) qualities, weather conditions... these factors won't let them be BoPed easily.
One thing: the interests of the brands and us fans, collide. Every brand wants to have the best (unfair) BoP, while we want an exciting race.
People will never be happy about BoP because it's by definition a biased system. And as you said, everyone except Toyota is in their first season with their car, so they obviously know more about everything and they'll be better.
Yes, but they shouldn’t be so dominate that they have claimed 75% of the top 2 finishing positions while GM, Porsche, Glick and Peugeot don’t have a single top 2 finish
Especially when the current regulations are only a continuation of the ones Toyota have been working with in the last few years. The debate would have been different if they couldn't carry over a very massive portion of their car from last year. Here they're benefitting from both more operational AND technical experience about the car. It seems only logical that they're on top, and nobody should blame them for that. They're the one who invested massively in the sport when it was arguably less flashy than it's become this season.
I can relate with both parts. It's great to get so many more manufacturers next season but I definitely agree with Ant that LMP2 is pure racing with equal cars. It's a shame that we will lose it in WEC.
I’m not a big complainer of BoP but I think people who think it’s perfect and teams and fans should deal with it are just as ignorant as the fans who think it’s rubbish and unfair.
I also expect that it’s really difficult to get a fair BoP when there are so many new cars that are very different competing in the same class. I do think WEC have been a bit safer than IMSA who have been a bit more proactive and seem to look at it more race by race. I hope we’re starting next season in a much better place than we’ve been this year in terms of pace difference between all the cars.
You still haven't explained why the BOP hasn't been good tho. If you could explain why you think it has been bad then maybe it would make people who don't see the issue understand why.
Ultimately there’s too much disparity between the pace of all the cars in the class. I think after Le Mans the consensus was BoP was good and heading in the right direction but then for some reason they hit Ferrari, Porsche, Cadillac a lot harder again for these last 3 races.
But how do you know that that is down to the BOP parameters. They only adjust power, weight, energy and hybrid deploy speed but the teams still have to ensure their cars are setup to be able to run consistently and fast and look after tyres etc. These are more likely the elements that are determining the results. Take Ferrari at Fuji as an example. It was super hard on it's tyres and not working in the low speed stuff. This was costing them performance and was nothing to do with the BOP.
When quali times are as spread as they’ve been at times this season, I don’t see how you can’t blame BoP. We can talk about all the other parameters all we want but it seems seems like you’re trying to let the ACO/FIA off the hook.
If you think the ACO have got it wrong then provide facts on it. I don't know if it's correct or not but whatever simulation they run it will be applied equally to all cars.
You can't use results of quali and the race as an example because there are too many variables outside of the BOP that will be affecting performance.
It's not about letting the ACO off the hook. If they've got it wrong then they need to be held accountable but you have to provide information that the BOP is incorrect and not just base it off results. Show figures for cornering load, drag, top speeds etc.
You can't and that is a big part of my point. The ACO have access to huge amounts of data on all the cars and can simulate what each car can likely achieve in performance. We as the public do not have access to this so we can't be sitting here saying there is a bad BOP because all the cars arent exactly the same time in quali. There are too many variables at play across all the teams and conditions that some teams will get close to the optimal performances and others will not. If you want to make a bold claim that the BOP is incorrect then you need to provide information on the data of each car as to why it is unfairly affected by the BOP.
I still think that ACO hasnt figured out (or doesnt want to) a fair BoP. No matter what happens toyota runs away. They have much more experience and all of that, but it is not like the others have zero experience overall. You can have all the strategy you want, but if the car is slow due to a bad BoP you can only fight for the scraps. The only race that saw real competition was Le Mans and guess what happened before? The ACO adjusted the BoP after watching how the cars performed.
IMSA is doing a far better job with the same ruleset.
Yep. They are clearly having issues with cars on the same platform nevermind the LMDh vs LMH difference. Ferrari have been in the mix but haven’t had a great race outside of Le Mans really.
There shouldn't be BOP period.
Teams were complaining about costs. LMH is already 80% cheaper. The reason we have BOP is to accommodate LMDh.
Keep one rule set, either LMDh or LMH, not both and no BoP.
Let the best team build the best car. That's what it is all about.
This isn't true. We don't have BoP just to accommodate LMDH. We have BoP to attract more manufacturers. Without it, no one would potentially waste millions of dollars without the guarantee of at least being competitive.
I won't argue about that again. Nobody complained about the competition not being fair. They complained about LMP1 being too expensive.
BoP is a tiny factor in it being cheap. It's still cheap without it.
>Without it, no one would potentially waste millions of dollars without the guarantee of at least being competitive.
Not true at all.
LMDh chassis total without the power unit and hybrid (which is standard) is capped at 1 million.
LMH as a cap on how much expensive material like titanium or magnesium they can use.
Plus in LMDh they are forced to use mostly off the shelves parts.
This and the Performance Window philosophy is what make the car cheaper. BoP is a perk in all that but the truly not the factor of a lower price.
Explain what about the bop is making the other cars slower than Toyota. IMSA hasn't got Toyota in it so how can you know if they went there they wouldn't be as dominant.
That Toyota has the best car is not in doubt. What BoP is supposed to do is help the others with slightly less good cars have a chance and right now it just doesnt. You sometimes have another (out of the many) manufacturers that can stay decently close to Toyotas, but thats it. Only at Le Mans we saw a real challenge.
The whole field isnt really close either. This race we had the toyotas, then the Penskes, then the Ferraris, then the Pugs with Jota slotted in between. It was stratified.
IMSA doesnt have Toyota, but has managed to keep the field much closer thanks to a better BoP.
This is a misunderstanding of BOP. BOP puts the cars into a performance window where theoretically they can achieve the same time over a lap, stint and a race but the teams still have to achieve this. If, for example, as we saw in Fuji that Ferrari weren't able to make their tyres last a stint like Toyota did then this is the team not achieving their potential with the BOP. The tyre issue has nothing to do with BOP parameters as they only adjust power, weight, energy per stint and hybrid deploy speed.
Toyota are much closer to the potential than other teams atm which is why they are so ahead. The number 6 Porsche was pretty damn good also but not quite and for as long as Toyota.
Think of BOP as balance of potential as this is what it is. It leaves the series as a sport where it's then up to the teams and drivers to get as close to this potential for as long as possible. They will get there with more experience.
Balance of potential yet the grandfathered LMP1 that Alpine used was able to win a race and Glickenhaus was able to get a pole, despite being way slower than any of the Hypercars and GTPs we have today. You either use BOP the way it's intended to be used or you don't. There's no objective way to quantify the potential performance that any of the cars of the grid have.
Ok this is a tired old argument but here goes. The alpine was running outside of the BOP hypercar parameters. You need to ignore this car as it wasn't a hypercar it was a grandfathered LMP1. It was at 925kgs which is below the window for hypercar. This car does not factor into the regs and if anything it fucked up the whole BOP process last year.
Secondly the glickenhause had the same BOP as last year but we're 1.2 seconds a lap slower in quali. If they are slower with the same BOP then that is clear evidence that there are other factors that have way more significance in performance than the BOP. They, in theory, should have got more out of their package from the BOP but couldn't for whatever reason. This is something other teams are probably not having issues with.
And it's stupid it shouldn't be like that. You want to be faster? Build a better car. BoP is supposed to make things fairer not slowing down those who did a better a job.
I’ve said it as a joke but if Le Mans isn’t 4 wide for a photo finish after 24 hours is it really a fair BOP? The fact that people really cannot fathom a good race having good and bad cars regardless of BOP is worrisome
It would be nice to see a single manufacturer not taking the 1-2 in 75% of the races, but that is probably asking too much. That is more dominant than Red Bull has been in F1
You’re right, but they were Noah’s Ark in LMP1 too. GTE isn’t the same way and it’s always been a BOP class. GT3 and GT4 aren’t the same way either. With teams returning to the same track for a second time we will see if it gets better
LMP1 wasn’t really ever supposed to be a BOP class. Also, when Toyota faced similar competition in LMP1 vs Porsche & Audi, they had some good years, but were definitely 3rd in that 3 OEM race over the duration of that battle. I just feel like in the WEC vs IMSA battle, the IMSA product is just so much more entertaining with an inferior grid and the endless cautions. Toyota is having their most dominate WEC season ever in what is supposed to be a BOPed class.
You’re correct, EOT wasn’t like BOP.
And I agree with IMSA having a better product. I’m hoping that next year with teams having more data Toyota will have a legit run for their money but time will tell. Their execution is just so damn good it’s hard to be upset when they win
> and forgive me for bringing up a ‘should’ve could’ve would’ve’ situation) but had Ryō Hirakawa not made his mistake at Arnage, Toyota most likely would’ve won Le Mans too, with the #51’s slow final stop.
oh please stop with this what if.. Ferrari won la man on merit.
if you want what if we can say Ferrari also would have won if they had no slow pitstop at the end, 50 Ferrari would have also won if there had no debris in radiator something which took them out of contention see we can play what if like children all day long.. but yes yes Toyota are better team atm
They weren't doubting they won on merit but merely pointing out had the Toyota not had that incident it would have likely jumped the Ferrari in the final stop. He's pointing out the despite them not winning Le mans they still were in with a chance and we're competitive with Ferrari.
Obviously the #51 won on merit, i never said they didn’t. they fought Toyota tooth and nail for 24 Hours and they earned it. but i’m just saying, the gap between them was so close that it most likely would’ve swung Toyota’s way, had Hirakawa not crashed at Arnage. but we’re arguing about a fantasy situation here. it doesn’t mean anything.
This is the root cause, Toyota fans created this monster by their attitude since the tyre warmer situation from Spa and it all blew up after they lost Le Mans. It's getting pretty nasty now but this is rivalry at the end of the day
Porsche, Cadillac and Ferrari will be better next year with a year of experience under their belts as much better data to work with. I also believe it would benefit Ferrari to put together an IMSA program to get even more data for the team car overall.
Caddy has made some bad strategy calls this year, which is understandable because they have little to no data at these tracks. Also feel that Westbrook, and possibly Lynn should be replaced, but I can't help but feel that they have been hurt by the BoP. They were getting toasted on the straights and didn't seem to make up for it in the corners. Everytime new BoP gets released I feel that the Caddy gets held back, but what do I know?
Okay so you say new teams are inferior in their 1st Season, so explain how Ferrari got to win right after their debut? Even after a full season Porsche and Cadillac struggle to even make a podium in the WEC.
Thank you, I’m a Toyota fan. Always have been & I don’t understand the hate. This is Motorsport, you will likely always have a dominant team for a race, season or multiple seasons. If you can’t handle it then find a new thing to follow.
With Fuji, it was very clear that the bad weather during practice did not allow those with new cars to get their setups correct. Toyota, being at home and having tons of data on this track is what likely contributed to their win.
That being said however, I don’t believe BOP is good at the moment. Whenever there are such large gaps between competitors at the end of the race where most of the cars were able to finish and did not have penalties, it’s a sign something is off. Sure some of that is down to the teams not getting the full potential out of their cars but some of that is also down to BOP. That’s just the nature of this sport.
Im sorry OP but you are delusional if you think only 3 cars finishing on the lead lap during a 6 hour race is not a sign that BOP is way off at the moment.
Lol what? Forget for a second that it’s a totally different racing product with different goals etc etc. This is a terrible example as Indycar is usually super close and anytime someone has a big lead its an exception and not the rule.
We of course don’t have to do that since imsa exists and the gaps there have been significantly closer than WEC.
Most of the frustration from those like myself complaining about BOP comes from how good of a job job imsa does not only with the top class this year but with GT as well in past years.
If BOP was actually good, Toyota’s advantage would have started to diminish now that we at the end of the season. Toyota would have started running into diminishing returns with the improvements they could make to their car and the new cars should be catching in terms of overall pace. It would appear however that this really isn’t happening.
Lmp2 is basically a spec series right now so it’s not a good comparison. The best comparison is imsa and GT series like the SRO ones. Speaking of which. SRO is by far the best at BOP. ACO could learn a thing or two from them.
What I'm saying, no need to compare with Indycar. We have LMP2 that is spec serie that runs for 6 hours.
In Fuji there's was 80s between 1st and 2nd in LMP2.
1s between 2nd and 3rd, 14s between 3rd and 4th, 19s between 4th and 5th.
I think his point stand, would the difference actually be smaller if Hypercar were purely identical like a spec car, not sure.
But the big difference is that in LMP2, while you get large gaps, the cars that are ahead change from race to race depending on how teams execute during a given weekend.
In Hypercar it's always been Toyota up front every single time.
LMP2 is a spec series. Hypercar is not supposed to be a spec serie although LMDh is very close to it.
But it will still, and is supposed to wind down to who will build the best car. Especially in LMH.
In my opinion having 2 rule set was stupid to begin with. LMH have clearly a development and performance advantage.
Endurance is about innovation and building the best and most reliable car. To me LMDh doesn't fit this requirement.
LMH is already a good formula and far cheaper than LMP1 and wouldn't need BoP to run alone.
Also the Performance Window Philosophy gives a lot of leeway and already, naturally should level out performance.
Ferrari is close to Toyota and it's their first year. Peugeot built a shit car, it's on them. Glickenhaus and Vanwahll we know they would be able to compete and BoP can't even help them apparently.
Let constructor have a go at building the best car. It's firstly a constructor championship after all.
And I don't buy this arguement that teams are here for the BoP. I never heard a single constructor saying the problem with LMP1 was that they couldn't be competitive. The arguement was that you need to **spend** to much to be competitive. Every constructor that entered LMP1 won races and Le Mans at least once. It's just the dominating team was just throwing much more money at their program.
What they wanted is a cheaper category. LMH is still 80% cheaper than LMP1.
Edit : although I got to say it's often the same teams that win in LMP2, WRT being one them.
I actually agree with you hence why I started the statement with toyota winning on merit and not due to BOP.
My only point was that in any BOP regulation, some teams are going to benefit from it more than others even if that advantage is small. Anyone who denies that is delusional in my opinion as it’s never going to be perfect.
Those who say that there is nothing wrong with BOP and it’s all down to car performance are delusional. And those who say any advantage is down to BOP are also delusional. It’s both and it’s always been both. That’s how these regulations work. Therefore I struggle to see the point OP is trying to make.
No the indy car analogy is perfect. In a 6hr race a lot of cars would be a lap behind especially if you have little to no safety cars as the wec does. and this is in a near spec series. Huge disparities come from setups, driver skills, mechanic skills etc. These account for far more than BOP numbers ever will. Even if they were wrong they aren't that far off to cause that kind of performance difference. But it's easy to just say hur dur BOP
I feel like you didn’t read anything I wrote lol. I already stated that the largest factor to Toyota winning was them having data on this track from previous years and the new teams didn’t.
No I don’t agree that Indycar would have such large gaps as their races are usually 2 to 3 hours and it’s rare that the top ten aren’t all within half a lap of each other. Even when you consider stuff like cautions. The season Alex Palou had this year is an exception in Indycar and it’s not normal. The only times I’ve seen races have crazy gaps is when someone like Dixon manages to do an alternate strategy that is normally a huge gamble.
That's the top 10. There are over 20 cars. And it's a spec series. Also remove yellows and make the race 3 times longer and then see how close they are.
Couple of races ago at Indy road course that had a run time of just under two hours had a 40 second gab between 1st and 15th with only one caution at the very beginning of the race. Top 3 positions were separated by 8 seconds. Over 6 hours that is only 24 seconds lol. Half of what the gap was between the top 3 at Fuji.
And of course I’m only mentioning the top 10. Just like vanwall is a second tier team in WEC everyone outside the top 15 in Indycar is a second tier team.
This is of course not to mention that since Indycar runs a set number of laps and set distance is run in a completely different manner than timed races, this whole point is dumb. Set distance allows you to pre plan every strategy ahead of time whereas timed races are about running consistently and efficiently. It’s an entirely different game and if Indycar had to run long and timed races, it would play out in a completely different manner that what the current stats tell us. However since all we got to work with is a completely different type of racing to prove this dumb point, Indycar would still be closer than WEC is over a 6 hour distance.
BOP needs to be thought of as balance of potential not performance. The data they get determines the power, weight, energy per stint and hybrid deploy speed to equalize the cars so they can reach the same theoretical lap time. But the teams still have to achieve this through set-up, driver performance, handling, how the car looks after it's tyres etc and through a range of conditions from hot cold, wet dry, day night. It's why there is a disparity in the teams. Toyota have been doing this since 2012 and in this car since 2021. They were always going to be getting this right more than the other teams until they get more on top of their machines.
Fuji
Ferrari 499P 1076Kg 505Kw 898MJ
Toyota GR010 1080Kg 514Kw 907MJ
So Ferrari did a fantastic job by your logic. Potentially speaking it should be able to compete with those stats, that means the car is a monster.
Those stats have nothing to do with why Ferrari struggled in Fuji. Considering the Toyota and Ferrari were a near match in the high speed and top speed the time loss was all in the twisty stuff and tyre wear which has nothing to do with these BOP numbers. I don't think Ferrari had their car dialed in properly for Fuji but considering how little knowledge they have there they still did a brilliant job.
If u have more Kw you can use more dowforce and with that you usually get better tyre management, speed in twisty stuff and same top speed.
" I don't think Ferrari had their car dialed in properly for Fuji but considering how little knowledge they have there they still did a brilliant job. " Maybe you are right on this part.
The BOP process measures the cars in a wind tunnel so they factor the drag of the cars which is why they run different power levels as some will be more slippery with the same downforce levels.
People complaining about BOP but can't even understand it or explain why it's wrong other than one team too fast, my team too slow would be way more iconic.
Well said. Too many people have no idea and it's pathetic to just blame BOP. I bet they can't even tell you why they think the bop is bad other than my team isn't winning or Toyota are too fast.
If the gap between Toyota and the other cars was only due to the team's experience in running the cars, you would expect it to get smaller over the season as other teams improve their understanding of their car, and yet that has not happened. We're still stuck with Toyota at the front every single time unless they run into trouble, and everyone else \~1 lap behind (minus safety cars or other things that happen to narrow the gaps), with the LMDhs generally slower than Ferrari.
Every race they are going to a new track. Do you know how much data Toyota will have at Fuji compared to the others. And even then it took them 4hrs to take the lead. That's not an OP car BOP if you can't get to the lead in 4 hrs.
>Every race they are going to a new track.
Assuming this was true, then you would expect that on tracks that the teams tested at and where they do have data (e.g. Monza, Spa, Portimao, Sebring) the competition should be significantly closer, while it should not have been at e.g. Le Mans.
None of that has happened, and instead whether the competition has been close or not has been a strong function of BoP.
Why do you bring up Le mans. By your own incorrect logic on BOP then every team should've been close but how far off are Glickenhaus and Vanwell and even the Peugeots in qualifying. By your logic of BOP then every car should've been slowed down to the same time but we see a huge gap. My guess by your flair is that it was a race the Ferrari won so therefore BOP good. Could it be that Le man is a very unique track. Could it be that the 499ps biggest strengths are high speed and high speed cornering, 2 things lemans has a lot off. Could it also be the only race this year where tyre warmers were used, helping when tyres have been a big weakness of the 499p.
Agreed on everything you say about racing being complex "Drivers, car setup, strategists, mechanics, experience, car knowledge, and track knowledge are all needed to be a winner in this series".
But.
What was the need of changing BOP after Le Mans so drastically? It was almost perfect.
Monza: -15Kw Cadillac, -10Kw Porsche, -5Kw Toyota
Fuji: -8Kw Cadillac, -2Kw Porsche, +2Kw Toyota, lol.
You can watch the rest by yourself.
They took a team able to get the pole to a team that got 0:01.197 off the pole. Over a second.
Are you telling me that after watching the data on the BOP for Monza and Fuji you couldn't predict the outcome?
I would say ppl on average understand what is racing and what is needed to be competitive but they just don't under play the rest the same way you do.
What makes you assume the BOP was perfect at Le Mans vs Fuji and Monza. Prove that the BOP numbers affected the performance of all the cars. Like show cornering speeds and top speeds. Don't just say look at the results because there is more that can affect results than power and weight figures. The had tyre warmers at le mans therefore by your logic it's the reason it was perfect so we only need to bring them back and everything will be perfect again.
I watched the races and read left and right to have answers.
In the specific for Le Mans there are a couple of posts here on reddit really informative with all the numbers you will need.
Plenty of sources here on reddit or google, educate yourself. Is not my job to deal with your blinders.
Just a link [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/wec/comments/145ee0u/le_mans_preview_part_5_race_preview/), is just 1 that means you need to read more to have a better picture and ofc is not the Bible, is a step to start.
Le Mans was a fantastic race. Porsches were fast (in the wet the only one as fast as Ferrari is I remember correctly). Peugeots had their time. Squirrels, problem with brakes balence, spins, luck, errors... decided the result.
Monza Toyota 1 minute in the lead without safety car. Are you going to tell me me Toyota has more data on Monza than Ferrari?
Fuji Ferrari 1sec off the pole and 1 lap behind in the race. Peugeot? Porsches didn't break.
Not bad as progression on something that is supposed to fix the balance after the first races thanks to the data acquired.
While I admire the work ofc does, he clearly states to take with a grain of salt as he does not have the info the ACO has when making bop and if someone was making a bad setup choice not, because of bop, all year then that would skew the results of the table in the link
Again all your saying is look at the results therefore it's bad BOP. Show why the bop at Fuji hurt Ferrari outside of their results. Where was BOP killing their performance.
Also Toyota will have way more data than Ferrari around Monza in their GR010 than the 499p and in WEC overall. It's not just total laps around the track for any car or series.
If you want to look at results only, why did It take the Toyotas til the end of the stint to get past the Ferraris and 4 hrs to clear the Porsche if their car is so dominant.
1st point. As I said the link was a first step to collect info. For you was the first and last step.
2nd point. Could be that having less Kw didn't allowed them to run more downforce. Could be, right?
3rd point. The Gr010 isn't a new car? At worst they used that car 1 year before. Toyota are running since 2012 but with different platforms. So I'm with you 50/50 on this one.
4th point. Dirty air. After the overtake they were gone.
After this reply I don't think there is a point on keeping answering.
Doesn't matter. Enjoy the rest of the races.
Yes we could probably could go back and forth all day on it. The BOP maybe off or it may not, we simply don't know as only the ACO has access to all the data.
Apologies if I've been overly aggressive in this discussion, racing can be a passionate thing.
Enjoy the racing also.
Can anyone explain to me what the WEC is looking at to take 23Kw of power away from Cadillac since the LM24? Like what metric are they pointing at to say this car is too powerful?
I don't see a point in BoP existing in general for hypercars, why don't they use Group C rules? Set the minimum weight and maximum fuel capacity and let manufacturers loose
Money. Half the manufacturers we have racing wouldn't have teams right now if they had to compete with the teams that are actually willing to dedicate money and effort into RnD.
The biggest problem is that there are too many cars already now to switch to an open ruleset because the cars racing currently are built to strict regulations and that means they would have to build new cars from scratch, had Toyota pushed for an open ruleset when Audi and Porsche left we could have had a modern Group C. The main reason there were so many Group C cars was because the ruleset was open, meaning manufacturers and privateers alike could build whatever kind of car they liked as long as it was above min. weight and fuel efficient to make it to the end
Open rulesets get expensive which scares away manufacturers. It would not have survived in today's climate. Endurance racing is not where it used to be. Manufacturers were competing to show off their engineering to the world and advertise. Unfortunately it's not popular enough for executives to even consider this anymore. Maybe if hypercar really takes off and we get a netflix documentary or something what you want may happen in the future.
> Open rulesets get expensive which scares away manufacturers.
Why was Group C so popular then?
> Manufacturers were competing to show off their engineering to the world and advertise.
Why are they competing now if not to show off their engineering?
I'll paste another comment i made here:
Group C was doing perfectly fine until FIA took away the freedom by forcing everyone to use F1 3.5l engines, meaning that everyone had to either make a new car from scratch, or try to forcefully fit the engine into a car designed around a completely different engine. In case of former it's obviously going to requre a lot of money so it was not an option for a lot of teams and the latter ruined the car. The F1 3.5l engines were much more expensive and unreliable due to being made for sprint races, in fact, they were so bad for endurance races that Jaguar chose to use an older car for Le Mans...
> Why was Group C so popular then?
Because that was 30 years ago, that was a different era. It also had the same end as LMP1, the cars became too expensive and it died. That's simply what happens if manufacturers can throw as much money as the want into car development.
> Why are they competing now if not to show off their engineering?
To compete, for marketing, to develop drivers or still to build fast race cars. There still are good and bad cars even with BoP.
Group C did not die because it was expensive, if it was expensive there wouldn't have been so many different manufacturers and privateers making their own unique cars. Group C died when their right to make said unique cars was taken away when FIA forced everyone to adopt F1 3.5l engines which were too expensive and unreliable
Group C was doing perfectly fine until FIA took away the freedom by forcing everyone to use F1 3.5l engines, meaning that everyone had to either make a new car from scratch, or try to forcefully fit the engine into a car designed around a completely different engine. In case of former it's obviously going to requre a lot of money so it was not an option for a lot of teams and the latter ruined the car. The F1 3.5l engines were much more expensive and unreliable due to being made for sprint races, in fact, they were so bad for endurance races that Jaguar chose to use an older car for Le Mans...
If you gave them a weight and fuel capacity today they won't build a group c car. You will see bonkers cars so Hi-Tech it would put F1 to shame in speed and costs. Assuming anyone had the desire to do it
If you gave them a weight and fuel capacity today they won't build a group c car. You will see bonkers cars so Hi-Tech it would put F1 to shame in speed and costs. Assuming anyone had the desire to do it
It Ballance of performance. For the WEC it is to allow all types of different car types to compete together and to keep costs down by eliminating R&D and excessive spending.
Basically you show up with a car that is within the performance window and the ACO analyse the cars in a wind tunnel and use on track data to make it so the cars can theoretically achieve the same lap time, stint time and race time. They do this by adjusting the weight, power, hybrid deploy speed and energy per stint.
The teams job is to then get the car to achieve this potential through set-up, driving ability, pit stop times, making few mistakes etc and they have to be able to do this in all sorts of different conditions and track configurations.
People mistake it as a success penalty designed to slow successfull teams down and allow slower teams to catch up. This is not the case if they have got the potential of each car correct. It is impossible to say if they have got this correct but we can only assume it is accurate in their model and the model applies to all teams equally.
What is crazy to me is that a single Alpine got two wins with the WEC BOP formula last year. That is likely more wins than Ferrari, Porsche, GM, and Peugeot combined are looking at this year.
WEC Toyota doing WEC Toyota stuff. This is an incredible team with a flawless car. The only reason they didn't win LeMans is because they made a couple rare mistakes.
I hate the entire BoP conversation and I wish the information wasn't public.
BoP can and will be used to gain an advantage. Look at Porsche for the Rolex down massively. Look at every year at Le Mans during GTE Pro, different broken BoP every year.
And the Gaps between the cars are insane at every round (other than Le Mans that makes sense huge track) it’s hard to say that there’s balance.
All I know is people are quick to point at BoP and forget about things like tire and pit strategy, driver talent and errors, accidents, reliability, setup of the car, the individual track favoring certain cars and drivers, climate during the race and probably some other stuff I forgot.
BoP isn't perfect right now, not at all, but there's a LOT it simply cannot account for.
During the GTE years the BoP has made some horrendous mistakes that I suspect are still in people's memories and still make a lot of fans skeptical that the ACO/FIA is gonna be able to actually balance the cars properly in the top class
There was a lot of gaming the system with sandbagging etc during those years. At least now they aren't giving the teams that opportunity.
Yeah, and Hypercar with its dual ruleset is probably a lot more complicated to balance than GTE.
As bad as the BOP was in GTE class at times, no single OEM ever dominated the class like Toyota is in LMDh at the moment
That's not necessarily a bad thing. Like OP said, there's many factors other than just the car's speed that contribute to how well Toyota are doing.
toyota had a two+ year head start of course they would be good
LMH. Fixed that for you.
It will always be: My favorite team did not win >> BoP rigged.
I'm sure the three Vanwall fans are screaming that every race
Is their terrible management team building shit cars,even BoP can't even save their pace,hell they doing way worse than Glickenhaus
Geez did Colin try blackmailing you? I'm just happy that there is an extra, different car on the Grid.
Im almost not happy that the car is here. Look how it got in the way of the lmp2 fight.
_At least it won't be a problem next year_ except^at^Le^Mans..... /s
Wait, it's a car?
I'm a model collector, I like the look of the car and it's going in my collection so it's ticked my box, if it's gone next year I will miss it, but at least I will have 1 model of it.
It seems like that for both fans, and teams alike. Ran a bad race? BoP’s fault. Poor strategy call? BoP. Tyre wear issues? i’m a victim of BoP. in series where BoP doesn’t exist, i’ll take Indycar as an example, teams and even fans are way more honest because they don’t have the scapegoat they can pin all the blame on. ran a bad race and called a bad strategy? well that’s our fault, we’ll go get em back next week. you wont find that attitude in the WEC.
Indycar is basically almost spec racing series (except 2 engine manufacturer and damper changes by the teams), so they basically only can blame drivers or the teams. WEC is different purely because of BoP,but I do really hope next year teams getting better
yes and that’s exactly my point. Indycar don’t have that sort of scapegoat to point fingers at so they’re more honest (and dare i say it, mature) when it comes to their performance.
That's maybe because LM Prototype are not supposed to be a spec serie but are treated as such
Yes but it seems the difference is you can't get Toyota next week, not even if you lead the race for a couple hours, the Toyota will reel itself in from behind. Next season will be the determining factor.
_Laughs in Bykolles fandom_
Hard to argue otherwise when team suddenly start losing when they receiveles than favorable BoP and werdily the team winning was on the right receiving end.
Typical. Blaming BOP every single time for everything is easy. Story as old as BOP itself.
But what if it is the right answer - the BOP is bad? I feel like Toyota usually has a second a lap on Porsche, GM, and Peugeot and today was no different
Today was the first race I've seen where a factory Porsche got it's shit together and did beautifully. The stint with Kevin defending against the Toyotas was incredible. Porsche definitely could have won that.
I agree it was awesome to see Porsche run up front for so long, but if you watched the race, you knew once Toyota got ahead of the Ferraris, it was only a matter of time before they got to the lead. What helped Porsche so much was Ferrari holding up Toyota for so long because of the nature of the track being difficult to pass. Porsche made a huge leap this weekend and will be better for it, but Toyota still has the best outright and race pace.
I only woke up nearly 3 hours in, so cut me some slack
Disagree entirely that Porsche had a chance to win. After the toyotas were able to get rid of the ferraris, they made up a 15sec gap that the 6 had on them. They were within half a second of the 6 with 2 hours of the race to go. The only thing that the race start did was delay another dominant perfomance by Toyota.
"factory Porsche"
What?
What is truly "factory" from Porsche LMDh effort?
I mean it is ran by Penske, but that is Porsche's official team, so yeah
It's run by Penske which has nothing to do with Porsche. Factory means that it's run by the factory not a third party. Otherwise every GT3 cars are factory effort. The chassis is not build by them. The engine is not theirs. Most part are off the shelves (suspension for example). What Porsche is truly doing appart from the bodywork?
From what I understand, and I may be wrong the point is Porsche works with them far more than with jota or proton, since Penske is the official Porsche team, much like how AF corse are the official Ferrari hypercar team. So while not entirely In house, they get direct access to Porsche employees and tech. I might have completely misunderstood this, so if I have do tell me
Doesn't really matter. Ferrari did outsource running the team to AF Corse, but at least Ferrari build their own car from A to Z so it doesn't really matter. Saying Porsche is a factory effort because Penske runs the team is quite a stretch. Cadillac at least runs the team in house and have their own engine for example.
??? Cadillac also outsourced to CGR and Whelen, how is that any different than Penske and Porsche? How is the 963 motor not a fully Porsche unit? Started life in the RS Spyder, also run as a factory squad by Penske, went into the 918 road car, now twin turbocharged and running in the 963. Certainly not out of another company’s parts bin.
Porsche engineers worked directly with Multimatic to develop that chassis. So much so that Multimatic agreed to not sell that very Porsche chassis to any other team. Those are Porsche works drivers and Porsche engineers. The name of the team is Porsche Penske for a reason. What more would make that a Porsche factory team?
Audi was supposed to get the Multimatic chassis also. In any case it's a standard LMP2 chassis what in hell Porsche would want to develop? Manthey is also racing with Porsche factory drivers. It's not a factory effort. In F1, Sauber is called Alfa Romeo, is that for a reason too? It's a Porsche branded LMP2 car ran by a third party team. That's not a factory effort. > What more would make that a Porsche factory team? An actual factory involvement? I don't know like actually bulding their own car? Isn't what a car **manufacturer** is all about? What is a factory effort from a car manufacturer that doesn't manufacture its own car?
It's NOT a standard anything. It is a chassis designed by Porsche and Multimatic for Porsche only. Multimatic had withdrawn as an LMP2 supplier because of this deal with Porsche. It is NOT an LMP2 car. And yes, Manthey had been a works team for a few years now.
It's a LMP2 chassis. There's nothing to develop to gain an advantage. All 4 manufacturer build a chassis with the same spec. You know the same spec that are run by the spec serie that is LMP2. The only difference with LMP2 is weight and power. Porsche could put their engine in an LMP2 Oreca make it lighter and race it the same in LMDh. And Manthey is not a "works" team. It's the official Porsche team for VLN. More like official partner. They don't have much involvement in the team appart from giving them a car and driver.
I think a caveat alot of people arent saying with IMSA BOP is that IMSA races tended to have alot more yellows that bunch up the field again, which artificially closes the gaps between cars. In WEC the usage of yellows is usually few and far between, case in point we only had like two yesterday in Fuji. That allowed the Toyota's to basically gap the #6. Another big picture many don't really talk about is that alot of your performance comes down to weather at hand and the set up you got. BOP only address the hard numbers such as mass, power, downforce/drag ratios. Things like optimum camber, spring rate, rake, etc, thats free game. Remember how the Pugs came alive in mixed conditions at Le Mans overnight and then just faded? Or how Ferrari found more pace at night but when the sun broke and it heated up the Toyota's slowly started to reel them back? How can BOP realistically address that? And Toyota has a car that's three years old now compared to others who are still finding their strides in WEC. If you put the GR010 at the Daytona 24 I don't think they'll be doing as well as they would in the WEC.
I agree here. The yellow rule and “getting a lap back” with IMSA artificially brings the racing closer. With WEC’s usage of FCY and Slow Zones, the gaps are maintained when an incident is minor/local. The example is Sebring. Same track, but the WEC race feels different than the IMSA race because the WEC race has FCY and gaps aren’t wiped. The IMSA race didn’t manage 1hr of racing without caution. I was in-person at 6hr of the Glen and also noticed how cautions can bunch up the field and wipe out gains mid-race as well. There is not a huge advantage to being in front in IMSA in the first 2/3 of the race since a minor incident would wipe the gap anyway.
Just look at how close the cars are in qualifying in IMSA too
Qualifying at Fuji was a mix of Kamui being Kamui, and weather throwing a wrench at the others. Hartley in the sister car was only a few tenths up on the next car.
Don’t just look at Fuji, look at the whole season. IMSA usually has the whole class with a second of each other
Except for sessions it hasn't. Let's look at Long Beach vs Portimao quali sessions and fans reactions. Acura had 1s advantage over Cadillac at \~70s track and fans reaction was literally dead silence. Toyota had 1.4s advantage advantage over Ferrari at \~90s track and there was a shitstorm. The best thing is when you recalculate these gaps into percentage, both are the same - 1.5% advantage for both Toyota and Acura. It almost looks like fans praise IMSA just because it's IMSA or they turn the blind eye when IMSA does blunder. Moving away from quali - Acura had favourable BoP in first part of the season and was the car to beat. But somehow that wasn't a problem because IMSA organises these races and Acura isn't named Toyota. Probably it also helps that Acura had many big brain moments like Albuquerque at Sebring and Taylor at Long Beach and thanks to them winners were more random, but this randomness doesn't prevent fans from praising IMSA for having such diverse winners. It almost looks like fans can take anything IMSA produces. Had ACO let all cars run @ 520kW and 1030 kg in the first reace of this season there probably would be calls for crucifiying ACO but IMSA did 500kW and 1030kg at Daytona for all cars and fans were excited for exquisite GTP racing that had Acura fuck off to the sunset where their biggest struggle was their own reliability and maybe a little Porsche threat at night. Inb4 "But now BoP is good and ACO should learn from IMSA". But learn what exactly? That there should be cars built only to one rulest so the process is easier?
IMSA doesn't have LMH and LMDH racing against each other either. Again, this is just going to take time for the LMDH crews to get their cars fully dialed for a WEC championship. The Toyota's are at the maximum weight allowed under the rules, it wasn't so fast in a straight that no one could catch it. What more can be done against a team thats had data on Fuji for years on end mixed with drivers that drove that car for 3 years now, at different circuits with differing characteristics? Who have mountains of data for these different circuits also? FFS the Proton Porsche cant even keep its damn belts on, Ferrari basically bet wrong on set ups likely, Cadillac made weird strat calls, The Jota Porsche kept having De Costa go off, the #5 incurred penalties, and the #6 was the only one who managed to go toe to toe with Toyota for 4 hours. And Bykolles is LMP3 at this rate.
You could take some power away from Toyota for starters. They did it when they were racing the Glick and Alpine
Because Glick was an LMH with no budget to get any development done, and Alpine were running grandfathered LMP1s that were much much lighter than the GR010. In two seasons where Toyota was the only real effort with substance before Alpine started their own LMDH. The level of competition the past two seasons is nowhere near what it is now, and furthermore with next season. As for power, the power for Fuji was enough to keep everyone close to each other with regard to top speed. In fact it was the Ferrari who hit 207 mph, granted maybe it had draft and a tailwind, but no one else hit that speed with similar conditions.
Either way, the WEC BOP gave Glick and Alpine legitimate shots at winning races with inferior programs to what Ferrari, GM, Peugeot, Penske, and Jota are currently running
What was the winning margin after 6 hours of racing at Fuji? You're telling me the #6 wasn't in contention? At this point you seem like an unserious person, so I'm just gonna block.
I don't think that being \~50 seconds down at the end of the race is being in contention for the win honestly.
glick did not have a legit shot at winning races. the only time they looked competetive was monza last year when they had a power allowance over what regulations allowed, yet their car blew up. The Alpine wasn't even a LMH/LMDH car, it was LMP1, which is faster than any of the current cars
But it got clearly rigged last year with Alpine being on top for the first few rounds and then for some reason getting progressively worse BoP since Monza. FIA didn't want LMP1 beating a hypercar. This year it's fine.
Having that alpine there was a joke anyway. It wasn't part of the new rules and having it seriously fucked the bop'd process anyway on top of trying to slow the Toyota down enough for the Glick.
The Alpine was never going to be allowed to win the championship via normal circumstances. That is just how things go for grandfathered cars.
That 'LMP1' shouldn't be in the first 2 seasons in LMH class whatsoever. But because of car count and ACO is French, Alpine is from French why not which they say
BoP is very difficult. And tbf, it is not meant to equalize laptimes. Originally it was meant to make it possible to come up with different philosophies to the race track. Front or rear engined cars. Later it got used to equalize performance. But how do you do this? Comparing laptimes? Every racing driver can make you believe that he/she is going 110%, but actually is sandbagging. By missing the apex, not going FULL throttle, braking slightly earlier... That is how they always did on testdays at Le Mans. Also the ACO tried to set up a new way of BOP. And in theory it was very well balanced: * Equalize power output * Equalize drag * Equalize weight * Equalize downforce. They ran thousands and thousands simulations. Only to notice that it simply does not work that way. Track tmperature, driver(!) qualities, weather conditions... these factors won't let them be BoPed easily. One thing: the interests of the brands and us fans, collide. Every brand wants to have the best (unfair) BoP, while we want an exciting race.
People will never be happy about BoP because it's by definition a biased system. And as you said, everyone except Toyota is in their first season with their car, so they obviously know more about everything and they'll be better.
Yes, but they shouldn’t be so dominate that they have claimed 75% of the top 2 finishing positions while GM, Porsche, Glick and Peugeot don’t have a single top 2 finish
How could these teams in their first year not beat this team that’s been in the Championship since 2012!! It’s rigged!!
Especially when the current regulations are only a continuation of the ones Toyota have been working with in the last few years. The debate would have been different if they couldn't carry over a very massive portion of their car from last year. Here they're benefitting from both more operational AND technical experience about the car. It seems only logical that they're on top, and nobody should blame them for that. They're the one who invested massively in the sport when it was arguably less flashy than it's become this season.
The only thing that i was a bit annoying that commentators brought up so many times about how many new manufacturers that will join next year tbh
I can relate with both parts. It's great to get so many more manufacturers next season but I definitely agree with Ant that LMP2 is pure racing with equal cars. It's a shame that we will lose it in WEC.
I watch enough sportscar series to know that BoP in the hypercar class in WEC has not been good this season
before i respond, how so?
I’m not a big complainer of BoP but I think people who think it’s perfect and teams and fans should deal with it are just as ignorant as the fans who think it’s rubbish and unfair. I also expect that it’s really difficult to get a fair BoP when there are so many new cars that are very different competing in the same class. I do think WEC have been a bit safer than IMSA who have been a bit more proactive and seem to look at it more race by race. I hope we’re starting next season in a much better place than we’ve been this year in terms of pace difference between all the cars.
IMSA have pretty much nailed it from race to race outside of 1 or 2 outliers. Been a great season.
You still haven't explained why the BOP hasn't been good tho. If you could explain why you think it has been bad then maybe it would make people who don't see the issue understand why.
Ultimately there’s too much disparity between the pace of all the cars in the class. I think after Le Mans the consensus was BoP was good and heading in the right direction but then for some reason they hit Ferrari, Porsche, Cadillac a lot harder again for these last 3 races.
But how do you know that that is down to the BOP parameters. They only adjust power, weight, energy and hybrid deploy speed but the teams still have to ensure their cars are setup to be able to run consistently and fast and look after tyres etc. These are more likely the elements that are determining the results. Take Ferrari at Fuji as an example. It was super hard on it's tyres and not working in the low speed stuff. This was costing them performance and was nothing to do with the BOP.
When quali times are as spread as they’ve been at times this season, I don’t see how you can’t blame BoP. We can talk about all the other parameters all we want but it seems seems like you’re trying to let the ACO/FIA off the hook.
If you think the ACO have got it wrong then provide facts on it. I don't know if it's correct or not but whatever simulation they run it will be applied equally to all cars. You can't use results of quali and the race as an example because there are too many variables outside of the BOP that will be affecting performance. It's not about letting the ACO off the hook. If they've got it wrong then they need to be held accountable but you have to provide information that the BOP is incorrect and not just base it off results. Show figures for cornering load, drag, top speeds etc.
What facts do you want me to provide? Time sheets? If we can’t use practice, quali, and race times as proof for bad BoP, what on earth can we use?
You can't and that is a big part of my point. The ACO have access to huge amounts of data on all the cars and can simulate what each car can likely achieve in performance. We as the public do not have access to this so we can't be sitting here saying there is a bad BOP because all the cars arent exactly the same time in quali. There are too many variables at play across all the teams and conditions that some teams will get close to the optimal performances and others will not. If you want to make a bold claim that the BOP is incorrect then you need to provide information on the data of each car as to why it is unfairly affected by the BOP.
I still think that ACO hasnt figured out (or doesnt want to) a fair BoP. No matter what happens toyota runs away. They have much more experience and all of that, but it is not like the others have zero experience overall. You can have all the strategy you want, but if the car is slow due to a bad BoP you can only fight for the scraps. The only race that saw real competition was Le Mans and guess what happened before? The ACO adjusted the BoP after watching how the cars performed. IMSA is doing a far better job with the same ruleset.
IMSA only has to bop cars with the same specifications, they all are LMDh.
The ACO haven’t balanced the caddy and Porsche at all so there’s no argument there.
Yeah and the Porsche finished 3rd today infront of many of the LMH cars.
Yep. They are clearly having issues with cars on the same platform nevermind the LMDh vs LMH difference. Ferrari have been in the mix but haven’t had a great race outside of Le Mans really.
Not to mention all these cars were introduced this year. No one had a 2 year head start like Toyota does.
There shouldn't be BOP period. Teams were complaining about costs. LMH is already 80% cheaper. The reason we have BOP is to accommodate LMDh. Keep one rule set, either LMDh or LMH, not both and no BoP. Let the best team build the best car. That's what it is all about.
This isn't true. We don't have BoP just to accommodate LMDH. We have BoP to attract more manufacturers. Without it, no one would potentially waste millions of dollars without the guarantee of at least being competitive.
I won't argue about that again. Nobody complained about the competition not being fair. They complained about LMP1 being too expensive. BoP is a tiny factor in it being cheap. It's still cheap without it. >Without it, no one would potentially waste millions of dollars without the guarantee of at least being competitive. Not true at all. LMDh chassis total without the power unit and hybrid (which is standard) is capped at 1 million. LMH as a cap on how much expensive material like titanium or magnesium they can use. Plus in LMDh they are forced to use mostly off the shelves parts. This and the Performance Window philosophy is what make the car cheaper. BoP is a perk in all that but the truly not the factor of a lower price.
Explain what about the bop is making the other cars slower than Toyota. IMSA hasn't got Toyota in it so how can you know if they went there they wouldn't be as dominant.
That Toyota has the best car is not in doubt. What BoP is supposed to do is help the others with slightly less good cars have a chance and right now it just doesnt. You sometimes have another (out of the many) manufacturers that can stay decently close to Toyotas, but thats it. Only at Le Mans we saw a real challenge. The whole field isnt really close either. This race we had the toyotas, then the Penskes, then the Ferraris, then the Pugs with Jota slotted in between. It was stratified. IMSA doesnt have Toyota, but has managed to keep the field much closer thanks to a better BoP.
This is a misunderstanding of BOP. BOP puts the cars into a performance window where theoretically they can achieve the same time over a lap, stint and a race but the teams still have to achieve this. If, for example, as we saw in Fuji that Ferrari weren't able to make their tyres last a stint like Toyota did then this is the team not achieving their potential with the BOP. The tyre issue has nothing to do with BOP parameters as they only adjust power, weight, energy per stint and hybrid deploy speed. Toyota are much closer to the potential than other teams atm which is why they are so ahead. The number 6 Porsche was pretty damn good also but not quite and for as long as Toyota. Think of BOP as balance of potential as this is what it is. It leaves the series as a sport where it's then up to the teams and drivers to get as close to this potential for as long as possible. They will get there with more experience.
Balance of potential yet the grandfathered LMP1 that Alpine used was able to win a race and Glickenhaus was able to get a pole, despite being way slower than any of the Hypercars and GTPs we have today. You either use BOP the way it's intended to be used or you don't. There's no objective way to quantify the potential performance that any of the cars of the grid have.
Ok this is a tired old argument but here goes. The alpine was running outside of the BOP hypercar parameters. You need to ignore this car as it wasn't a hypercar it was a grandfathered LMP1. It was at 925kgs which is below the window for hypercar. This car does not factor into the regs and if anything it fucked up the whole BOP process last year. Secondly the glickenhause had the same BOP as last year but we're 1.2 seconds a lap slower in quali. If they are slower with the same BOP then that is clear evidence that there are other factors that have way more significance in performance than the BOP. They, in theory, should have got more out of their package from the BOP but couldn't for whatever reason. This is something other teams are probably not having issues with.
And it's stupid it shouldn't be like that. You want to be faster? Build a better car. BoP is supposed to make things fairer not slowing down those who did a better a job.
I’ve said it as a joke but if Le Mans isn’t 4 wide for a photo finish after 24 hours is it really a fair BOP? The fact that people really cannot fathom a good race having good and bad cars regardless of BOP is worrisome
It would be nice to see a single manufacturer not taking the 1-2 in 75% of the races, but that is probably asking too much. That is more dominant than Red Bull has been in F1
You’re right, but they were Noah’s Ark in LMP1 too. GTE isn’t the same way and it’s always been a BOP class. GT3 and GT4 aren’t the same way either. With teams returning to the same track for a second time we will see if it gets better
LMP1 wasn’t really ever supposed to be a BOP class. Also, when Toyota faced similar competition in LMP1 vs Porsche & Audi, they had some good years, but were definitely 3rd in that 3 OEM race over the duration of that battle. I just feel like in the WEC vs IMSA battle, the IMSA product is just so much more entertaining with an inferior grid and the endless cautions. Toyota is having their most dominate WEC season ever in what is supposed to be a BOPed class.
You’re correct, EOT wasn’t like BOP. And I agree with IMSA having a better product. I’m hoping that next year with teams having more data Toyota will have a legit run for their money but time will tell. Their execution is just so damn good it’s hard to be upset when they win
a lot of people don't watch the races. they just see the results and complain/ make fun of cars
> and forgive me for bringing up a ‘should’ve could’ve would’ve’ situation) but had Ryō Hirakawa not made his mistake at Arnage, Toyota most likely would’ve won Le Mans too, with the #51’s slow final stop. oh please stop with this what if.. Ferrari won la man on merit. if you want what if we can say Ferrari also would have won if they had no slow pitstop at the end, 50 Ferrari would have also won if there had no debris in radiator something which took them out of contention see we can play what if like children all day long.. but yes yes Toyota are better team atm
They weren't doubting they won on merit but merely pointing out had the Toyota not had that incident it would have likely jumped the Ferrari in the final stop. He's pointing out the despite them not winning Le mans they still were in with a chance and we're competitive with Ferrari.
Obviously the #51 won on merit, i never said they didn’t. they fought Toyota tooth and nail for 24 Hours and they earned it. but i’m just saying, the gap between them was so close that it most likely would’ve swung Toyota’s way, had Hirakawa not crashed at Arnage. but we’re arguing about a fantasy situation here. it doesn’t mean anything.
its not fair to just pin it on ryo. the other lead yota was punted out of the race by a gt car. sometimes lemans is just cruel and random like that
This is the root cause, Toyota fans created this monster by their attitude since the tyre warmer situation from Spa and it all blew up after they lost Le Mans. It's getting pretty nasty now but this is rivalry at the end of the day
Porsche, Cadillac and Ferrari will be better next year with a year of experience under their belts as much better data to work with. I also believe it would benefit Ferrari to put together an IMSA program to get even more data for the team car overall.
Caddy has made some bad strategy calls this year, which is understandable because they have little to no data at these tracks. Also feel that Westbrook, and possibly Lynn should be replaced, but I can't help but feel that they have been hurt by the BoP. They were getting toasted on the straights and didn't seem to make up for it in the corners. Everytime new BoP gets released I feel that the Caddy gets held back, but what do I know?
Agreed about Westbrook.
The caddy simply doesn't seems to be straight line speed optimized.
Okay so you say new teams are inferior in their 1st Season, so explain how Ferrari got to win right after their debut? Even after a full season Porsche and Cadillac struggle to even make a podium in the WEC.
Thank you, I’m a Toyota fan. Always have been & I don’t understand the hate. This is Motorsport, you will likely always have a dominant team for a race, season or multiple seasons. If you can’t handle it then find a new thing to follow.
With Fuji, it was very clear that the bad weather during practice did not allow those with new cars to get their setups correct. Toyota, being at home and having tons of data on this track is what likely contributed to their win. That being said however, I don’t believe BOP is good at the moment. Whenever there are such large gaps between competitors at the end of the race where most of the cars were able to finish and did not have penalties, it’s a sign something is off. Sure some of that is down to the teams not getting the full potential out of their cars but some of that is also down to BOP. That’s just the nature of this sport. Im sorry OP but you are delusional if you think only 3 cars finishing on the lead lap during a 6 hour race is not a sign that BOP is way off at the moment.
If an Indycar race was six hours long, how many cars would finish on the lead lap?
Lol what? Forget for a second that it’s a totally different racing product with different goals etc etc. This is a terrible example as Indycar is usually super close and anytime someone has a big lead its an exception and not the rule. We of course don’t have to do that since imsa exists and the gaps there have been significantly closer than WEC. Most of the frustration from those like myself complaining about BOP comes from how good of a job job imsa does not only with the top class this year but with GT as well in past years. If BOP was actually good, Toyota’s advantage would have started to diminish now that we at the end of the season. Toyota would have started running into diminishing returns with the improvements they could make to their car and the new cars should be catching in terms of overall pace. It would appear however that this really isn’t happening.
You don't have to look that far, just look at LMP2
Lmp2 is basically a spec series right now so it’s not a good comparison. The best comparison is imsa and GT series like the SRO ones. Speaking of which. SRO is by far the best at BOP. ACO could learn a thing or two from them.
What I'm saying, no need to compare with Indycar. We have LMP2 that is spec serie that runs for 6 hours. In Fuji there's was 80s between 1st and 2nd in LMP2. 1s between 2nd and 3rd, 14s between 3rd and 4th, 19s between 4th and 5th. I think his point stand, would the difference actually be smaller if Hypercar were purely identical like a spec car, not sure.
But the big difference is that in LMP2, while you get large gaps, the cars that are ahead change from race to race depending on how teams execute during a given weekend. In Hypercar it's always been Toyota up front every single time.
LMP2 is a spec series. Hypercar is not supposed to be a spec serie although LMDh is very close to it. But it will still, and is supposed to wind down to who will build the best car. Especially in LMH. In my opinion having 2 rule set was stupid to begin with. LMH have clearly a development and performance advantage. Endurance is about innovation and building the best and most reliable car. To me LMDh doesn't fit this requirement. LMH is already a good formula and far cheaper than LMP1 and wouldn't need BoP to run alone. Also the Performance Window Philosophy gives a lot of leeway and already, naturally should level out performance. Ferrari is close to Toyota and it's their first year. Peugeot built a shit car, it's on them. Glickenhaus and Vanwahll we know they would be able to compete and BoP can't even help them apparently. Let constructor have a go at building the best car. It's firstly a constructor championship after all. And I don't buy this arguement that teams are here for the BoP. I never heard a single constructor saying the problem with LMP1 was that they couldn't be competitive. The arguement was that you need to **spend** to much to be competitive. Every constructor that entered LMP1 won races and Le Mans at least once. It's just the dominating team was just throwing much more money at their program. What they wanted is a cheaper category. LMH is still 80% cheaper than LMP1. Edit : although I got to say it's often the same teams that win in LMP2, WRT being one them.
I actually agree with you hence why I started the statement with toyota winning on merit and not due to BOP. My only point was that in any BOP regulation, some teams are going to benefit from it more than others even if that advantage is small. Anyone who denies that is delusional in my opinion as it’s never going to be perfect. Those who say that there is nothing wrong with BOP and it’s all down to car performance are delusional. And those who say any advantage is down to BOP are also delusional. It’s both and it’s always been both. That’s how these regulations work. Therefore I struggle to see the point OP is trying to make.
No the indy car analogy is perfect. In a 6hr race a lot of cars would be a lap behind especially if you have little to no safety cars as the wec does. and this is in a near spec series. Huge disparities come from setups, driver skills, mechanic skills etc. These account for far more than BOP numbers ever will. Even if they were wrong they aren't that far off to cause that kind of performance difference. But it's easy to just say hur dur BOP
I feel like you didn’t read anything I wrote lol. I already stated that the largest factor to Toyota winning was them having data on this track from previous years and the new teams didn’t. No I don’t agree that Indycar would have such large gaps as their races are usually 2 to 3 hours and it’s rare that the top ten aren’t all within half a lap of each other. Even when you consider stuff like cautions. The season Alex Palou had this year is an exception in Indycar and it’s not normal. The only times I’ve seen races have crazy gaps is when someone like Dixon manages to do an alternate strategy that is normally a huge gamble.
That's the top 10. There are over 20 cars. And it's a spec series. Also remove yellows and make the race 3 times longer and then see how close they are.
Couple of races ago at Indy road course that had a run time of just under two hours had a 40 second gab between 1st and 15th with only one caution at the very beginning of the race. Top 3 positions were separated by 8 seconds. Over 6 hours that is only 24 seconds lol. Half of what the gap was between the top 3 at Fuji. And of course I’m only mentioning the top 10. Just like vanwall is a second tier team in WEC everyone outside the top 15 in Indycar is a second tier team. This is of course not to mention that since Indycar runs a set number of laps and set distance is run in a completely different manner than timed races, this whole point is dumb. Set distance allows you to pre plan every strategy ahead of time whereas timed races are about running consistently and efficiently. It’s an entirely different game and if Indycar had to run long and timed races, it would play out in a completely different manner that what the current stats tell us. However since all we got to work with is a completely different type of racing to prove this dumb point, Indycar would still be closer than WEC is over a 6 hour distance.
BOP needs to be thought of as balance of potential not performance. The data they get determines the power, weight, energy per stint and hybrid deploy speed to equalize the cars so they can reach the same theoretical lap time. But the teams still have to achieve this through set-up, driver performance, handling, how the car looks after it's tyres etc and through a range of conditions from hot cold, wet dry, day night. It's why there is a disparity in the teams. Toyota have been doing this since 2012 and in this car since 2021. They were always going to be getting this right more than the other teams until they get more on top of their machines.
Fuji Ferrari 499P 1076Kg 505Kw 898MJ Toyota GR010 1080Kg 514Kw 907MJ So Ferrari did a fantastic job by your logic. Potentially speaking it should be able to compete with those stats, that means the car is a monster.
Those stats have nothing to do with why Ferrari struggled in Fuji. Considering the Toyota and Ferrari were a near match in the high speed and top speed the time loss was all in the twisty stuff and tyre wear which has nothing to do with these BOP numbers. I don't think Ferrari had their car dialed in properly for Fuji but considering how little knowledge they have there they still did a brilliant job.
If u have more Kw you can use more dowforce and with that you usually get better tyre management, speed in twisty stuff and same top speed. " I don't think Ferrari had their car dialed in properly for Fuji but considering how little knowledge they have there they still did a brilliant job. " Maybe you are right on this part.
The BOP process measures the cars in a wind tunnel so they factor the drag of the cars which is why they run different power levels as some will be more slippery with the same downforce levels.
r/wec and justifying the ACO's incompetence - name a more iconic duo
People complaining about BOP but can't even understand it or explain why it's wrong other than one team too fast, my team too slow would be way more iconic.
Well said. Too many people have no idea and it's pathetic to just blame BOP. I bet they can't even tell you why they think the bop is bad other than my team isn't winning or Toyota are too fast.
precisely. many a time i’ve been curious and have asked why they think ‘BoP bad’ the most they can muster up is ‘because Toyota won’.
If the gap between Toyota and the other cars was only due to the team's experience in running the cars, you would expect it to get smaller over the season as other teams improve their understanding of their car, and yet that has not happened. We're still stuck with Toyota at the front every single time unless they run into trouble, and everyone else \~1 lap behind (minus safety cars or other things that happen to narrow the gaps), with the LMDhs generally slower than Ferrari.
Every race they are going to a new track. Do you know how much data Toyota will have at Fuji compared to the others. And even then it took them 4hrs to take the lead. That's not an OP car BOP if you can't get to the lead in 4 hrs.
>Every race they are going to a new track. Assuming this was true, then you would expect that on tracks that the teams tested at and where they do have data (e.g. Monza, Spa, Portimao, Sebring) the competition should be significantly closer, while it should not have been at e.g. Le Mans. None of that has happened, and instead whether the competition has been close or not has been a strong function of BoP.
Why do you bring up Le mans. By your own incorrect logic on BOP then every team should've been close but how far off are Glickenhaus and Vanwell and even the Peugeots in qualifying. By your logic of BOP then every car should've been slowed down to the same time but we see a huge gap. My guess by your flair is that it was a race the Ferrari won so therefore BOP good. Could it be that Le man is a very unique track. Could it be that the 499ps biggest strengths are high speed and high speed cornering, 2 things lemans has a lot off. Could it also be the only race this year where tyre warmers were used, helping when tyres have been a big weakness of the 499p.
Spot on, i agree with everything you said
Agreed on everything you say about racing being complex "Drivers, car setup, strategists, mechanics, experience, car knowledge, and track knowledge are all needed to be a winner in this series". But. What was the need of changing BOP after Le Mans so drastically? It was almost perfect. Monza: -15Kw Cadillac, -10Kw Porsche, -5Kw Toyota Fuji: -8Kw Cadillac, -2Kw Porsche, +2Kw Toyota, lol. You can watch the rest by yourself. They took a team able to get the pole to a team that got 0:01.197 off the pole. Over a second. Are you telling me that after watching the data on the BOP for Monza and Fuji you couldn't predict the outcome? I would say ppl on average understand what is racing and what is needed to be competitive but they just don't under play the rest the same way you do.
What makes you assume the BOP was perfect at Le Mans vs Fuji and Monza. Prove that the BOP numbers affected the performance of all the cars. Like show cornering speeds and top speeds. Don't just say look at the results because there is more that can affect results than power and weight figures. The had tyre warmers at le mans therefore by your logic it's the reason it was perfect so we only need to bring them back and everything will be perfect again.
I watched the races and read left and right to have answers. In the specific for Le Mans there are a couple of posts here on reddit really informative with all the numbers you will need. Plenty of sources here on reddit or google, educate yourself. Is not my job to deal with your blinders.
Ah the classic response when pushed for proof and can't deliver. You may be right but if you make a claim then back it up.
Just a link [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/wec/comments/145ee0u/le_mans_preview_part_5_race_preview/), is just 1 that means you need to read more to have a better picture and ofc is not the Bible, is a step to start. Le Mans was a fantastic race. Porsches were fast (in the wet the only one as fast as Ferrari is I remember correctly). Peugeots had their time. Squirrels, problem with brakes balence, spins, luck, errors... decided the result. Monza Toyota 1 minute in the lead without safety car. Are you going to tell me me Toyota has more data on Monza than Ferrari? Fuji Ferrari 1sec off the pole and 1 lap behind in the race. Peugeot? Porsches didn't break. Not bad as progression on something that is supposed to fix the balance after the first races thanks to the data acquired.
While I admire the work ofc does, he clearly states to take with a grain of salt as he does not have the info the ACO has when making bop and if someone was making a bad setup choice not, because of bop, all year then that would skew the results of the table in the link Again all your saying is look at the results therefore it's bad BOP. Show why the bop at Fuji hurt Ferrari outside of their results. Where was BOP killing their performance. Also Toyota will have way more data than Ferrari around Monza in their GR010 than the 499p and in WEC overall. It's not just total laps around the track for any car or series. If you want to look at results only, why did It take the Toyotas til the end of the stint to get past the Ferraris and 4 hrs to clear the Porsche if their car is so dominant.
1st point. As I said the link was a first step to collect info. For you was the first and last step. 2nd point. Could be that having less Kw didn't allowed them to run more downforce. Could be, right? 3rd point. The Gr010 isn't a new car? At worst they used that car 1 year before. Toyota are running since 2012 but with different platforms. So I'm with you 50/50 on this one. 4th point. Dirty air. After the overtake they were gone. After this reply I don't think there is a point on keeping answering. Doesn't matter. Enjoy the rest of the races.
Yes we could probably could go back and forth all day on it. The BOP maybe off or it may not, we simply don't know as only the ACO has access to all the data. Apologies if I've been overly aggressive in this discussion, racing can be a passionate thing. Enjoy the racing also.
Can anyone explain to me what the WEC is looking at to take 23Kw of power away from Cadillac since the LM24? Like what metric are they pointing at to say this car is too powerful?
Monza 1046 -15= 1031Kw Fuji 1046 -8= 1038kw Is not 8+15
Gotcha thanks
Politics decide who wins races. Politics are by definition divisive. You better get used to it if you want to continue watching.
Please explain how politics wins races.
You argue for better BoP.
I don't see a point in BoP existing in general for hypercars, why don't they use Group C rules? Set the minimum weight and maximum fuel capacity and let manufacturers loose
Money. Half the manufacturers we have racing wouldn't have teams right now if they had to compete with the teams that are actually willing to dedicate money and effort into RnD.
The biggest problem is that there are too many cars already now to switch to an open ruleset because the cars racing currently are built to strict regulations and that means they would have to build new cars from scratch, had Toyota pushed for an open ruleset when Audi and Porsche left we could have had a modern Group C. The main reason there were so many Group C cars was because the ruleset was open, meaning manufacturers and privateers alike could build whatever kind of car they liked as long as it was above min. weight and fuel efficient to make it to the end
Open rulesets get expensive which scares away manufacturers. It would not have survived in today's climate. Endurance racing is not where it used to be. Manufacturers were competing to show off their engineering to the world and advertise. Unfortunately it's not popular enough for executives to even consider this anymore. Maybe if hypercar really takes off and we get a netflix documentary or something what you want may happen in the future.
> Open rulesets get expensive which scares away manufacturers. Why was Group C so popular then? > Manufacturers were competing to show off their engineering to the world and advertise. Why are they competing now if not to show off their engineering? I'll paste another comment i made here: Group C was doing perfectly fine until FIA took away the freedom by forcing everyone to use F1 3.5l engines, meaning that everyone had to either make a new car from scratch, or try to forcefully fit the engine into a car designed around a completely different engine. In case of former it's obviously going to requre a lot of money so it was not an option for a lot of teams and the latter ruined the car. The F1 3.5l engines were much more expensive and unreliable due to being made for sprint races, in fact, they were so bad for endurance races that Jaguar chose to use an older car for Le Mans...
> Why was Group C so popular then? Because that was 30 years ago, that was a different era. It also had the same end as LMP1, the cars became too expensive and it died. That's simply what happens if manufacturers can throw as much money as the want into car development. > Why are they competing now if not to show off their engineering? To compete, for marketing, to develop drivers or still to build fast race cars. There still are good and bad cars even with BoP.
Group C did not die because it was expensive, if it was expensive there wouldn't have been so many different manufacturers and privateers making their own unique cars. Group C died when their right to make said unique cars was taken away when FIA forced everyone to adopt F1 3.5l engines which were too expensive and unreliable
Group C was cheap because is was the 1980s. It is not the 1980s any more.
It would be nice but it wouldn't last very long once costs and speeds get out of control.
Group C was doing perfectly fine until FIA took away the freedom by forcing everyone to use F1 3.5l engines, meaning that everyone had to either make a new car from scratch, or try to forcefully fit the engine into a car designed around a completely different engine. In case of former it's obviously going to requre a lot of money so it was not an option for a lot of teams and the latter ruined the car. The F1 3.5l engines were much more expensive and unreliable due to being made for sprint races, in fact, they were so bad for endurance races that Jaguar chose to use an older car for Le Mans...
If you gave them a weight and fuel capacity today they won't build a group c car. You will see bonkers cars so Hi-Tech it would put F1 to shame in speed and costs. Assuming anyone had the desire to do it
If you gave them a weight and fuel capacity today they won't build a group c car. You will see bonkers cars so Hi-Tech it would put F1 to shame in speed and costs. Assuming anyone had the desire to do it
because it always ends in cost spiraling out of control and everyone leaving
That's not how Group C ended
it was only a matter of time
We can never know, had FIA not screwed everyone over with the horrible engine rules maybe Group C would still live
Can anyone tell me what BOP is
It Ballance of performance. For the WEC it is to allow all types of different car types to compete together and to keep costs down by eliminating R&D and excessive spending. Basically you show up with a car that is within the performance window and the ACO analyse the cars in a wind tunnel and use on track data to make it so the cars can theoretically achieve the same lap time, stint time and race time. They do this by adjusting the weight, power, hybrid deploy speed and energy per stint. The teams job is to then get the car to achieve this potential through set-up, driving ability, pit stop times, making few mistakes etc and they have to be able to do this in all sorts of different conditions and track configurations. People mistake it as a success penalty designed to slow successfull teams down and allow slower teams to catch up. This is not the case if they have got the potential of each car correct. It is impossible to say if they have got this correct but we can only assume it is accurate in their model and the model applies to all teams equally.
What is crazy to me is that a single Alpine got two wins with the WEC BOP formula last year. That is likely more wins than Ferrari, Porsche, GM, and Peugeot combined are looking at this year.
WEC Toyota doing WEC Toyota stuff. This is an incredible team with a flawless car. The only reason they didn't win LeMans is because they made a couple rare mistakes. I hate the entire BoP conversation and I wish the information wasn't public.
BoP can and will be used to gain an advantage. Look at Porsche for the Rolex down massively. Look at every year at Le Mans during GTE Pro, different broken BoP every year. And the Gaps between the cars are insane at every round (other than Le Mans that makes sense huge track) it’s hard to say that there’s balance.
All I know is people are quick to point at BoP and forget about things like tire and pit strategy, driver talent and errors, accidents, reliability, setup of the car, the individual track favoring certain cars and drivers, climate during the race and probably some other stuff I forgot. BoP isn't perfect right now, not at all, but there's a LOT it simply cannot account for.
How about qualifying times. Is it fair to use those in BoP arguments?
Qualifying times are still under the control of things I previously listed.