God giveth, God taketh away

God giveth the Toyotas an unbeatable advantage at LeMans, now God taketh it away

The FIA and ACO have given multiple concessions to LMP1 non-hybrids, in a new effort to level the playing field to the Toyota TS050 Hybrids in the World Endurance Championship.

It comes in the wake of last month’s 24 Hours of Le Mans, which saw a dominant performance for the Japanese manufacturer, which won by 12 laps over the best-placed non-hybrid fielded by Rebellion Racing.

The biggest change sees Toyota’s defined performance advantage of 0.25 percent (0.5 seconds per lap at Le Mans) eliminated in the regulations, and equalized with non-hybrids.

Additionally, non-hybrids have received an increase in fuel flow from 108 to 115 kg/h, along with a quicker refueling fuel flow during pit stops ahead of next month’s Six Hours of Silverstone.

Cars with normally aspirated engines, such as the Gibson engine that powers both the Rebellion R13s and DragonSpeed BR Engineering BR1s, meanwhile, will be given a 15kg reduction in minimum weight.

EoT numbers for the Toyotas, as defined in the regulations as the performance baseline, will remain unchanged.

ACO technical delegate Thierry Bouvet indicated that insufficient and unexpected data impacted the intended EoT for Le Mans, which saw non-hybrids with a lower-than-expected performance in the race.

“As a result of the studies carried out this winter we gave private teams a fuel flow to help them achieve performance levels close to those of the hybrid cars," he said.

“We then took advantage of concrete information collected during the Prologue, the first round at Spa and the Le Mans test day. As competitors know, not everything can be foreseen at Le Mans.

“For example, between the test day and qualifying at Le Mans the fastest time in the LMP2 category improved by 2.4 seconds compared to 0.2 seconds for the non-hybrid LMP1s.

“Several factors can explain this such as different track conditions or because the teams didn’t want to compromise reliability.

“Finally, multiple contextual parameters could also have affected certain EoT estimations." sportscar365