The convergence steps on the path to discover the WEC’s true golden age

There’s always been an elephant in the room in the Hypercar class of the World Endurance Championship since the start of what we have quickly come to call a golden age. And it’s the fact that cars built to two different rulesets – Le Mans Hypercar and LMDh – compete against each other at the front end of the world’s premier sportscar series. But now there appears to be a real desire among the manufacturers to move towards common regulations or something approaching them.

That process will start this week with the first of the follow-up meetings to the announcement made at the Le Mans 24 Hours WEC round in June that the life of the Hypercar division will be prolonged by another three years until the end of 2032. That came 12 months after the two-year extension through to the conclusion of 2029.

It is important to make a distinction between what was said by the Automobile Club de l’Ouest and the FIA, which jointly run the WEC, in 2024 and ’25 respectively. The first announcement was that the homologation of the current cars would run until the end of ’29. The extension rubber stamped by the World Motor Sport Council in Macau this June concerned the class rather than the actual cars. This offers the hope that the rules can come together when the new decade turns to create a fairer and closer playing field. And possibly less reliant on the Balance of Performance to level things out.

ACO president Pierre Fillon said on the stage of the Le Mans-organising club’s traditional Friday press conference during Le Mans that the “practicalities need to be discussed”, while suggesting that they “will be worked out by the end of the year”. That may not be an optimistic timescale given the will on the part of the manufacturers to move towards some kind of alignment of the two sets of rules.

Different manufacturers have different requirements when they go racing at the pinnacle of the WEC. Ferrari stressed, as it was looking to join the Hypercar field, that it had to have a bespoke chassis: a Ferrari has to be a Ferrari, even if its development partner on the monocoque is Dallara. What it couldn’t do was use the same chassis spine from one of the four licensed constructors, Dallara included: a Ferrari couldn’t be built around the same tub as Chevrolet or a BMW. That was among the reasons why it chose the LMH route.

Toyota’s WEC engagement has always been billed as a programme led on the benefits it brings to the brand in terms of research and development rather than marketing value. It needs to be able to develop its own energy retrieval technology and battery together with its partners. The idea of using the off-the-shelf hybrid system was anathema to the brand.

But those manufacturers that chose the cheaper LMDh route are saying there is no reason why the demands of Ferrari and Toyota couldn’t be incorporated into revised rules that appear likely to be closer to LMDh than LMH. Does it matter if a manufacturer wants to build its own LMDh chassis rather than getting one off the peg? Or develop its own hybrid technology rather than using the spec rear-axle LMDh kit produced by Bosch Motorsport, Fortescue Zero (formerly Williams Advanced Engineering) and Xtrac? No, says Porsche Motorsport boss Thomas Laudenbach, whose brand is in the LMDh camp with the 963, so long as the technical regulations are the same for everyone and offer the same chance for development.

Asked whether the LMDh rules could be tweaked to allow manufacturers to develop their own chassis and hybrid systems, Laudenbach says: “This is absolutely possible. I think there is a solution for that. I fully accept a manufacturer saying ‘this is important to me’, everything I have heard so far can be solved. I am not saying it is easy, but I am pretty sure this is possible.”

On the chassis question, he adds: “If I want to do my own within the rules of LMDh, where’s the problem? I don’t see a problem.” And on the hybrid conundrum: “If somebody says to me it is the most important thing that the hybrid system is my own, that’s fine. You just have to make a technical description of what is allowed.”

Andreas Roos – head of motorsport at BMW, another marque in the LMDh camp – offers a similar opinion. “I don’t think it is a problem to have your own chassis or hybrid system,” he says. “We need to be clever and make the technical regulations in a certain way so no one has an advantage and the basic technical regulations are the same for everyone. For me this is possible.”

Bruno Famin, motorsport boss at Alpine, reckons that “the way forward doesn’t look very complicated”. The trick, he continues, will be ensuring that costs do not rise with new freedoms being allowed. “Technically speaking it is not very complicated,” he explains. “But we have to be careful to maintain the costs at a reasonable level, because if everyone has to develop his own battery, his own MGU, his own I don’t know what, it won’t be the same story.”

The official line from Ferrari is that it is “open” to the idea of convergence. But back at the start of the year, Ferdinando Cannizzo, technical director of its sportscar programmes, was forthright in his belief that a common platform can be the only way forward for the WEC.

#009 Aston Martin Thor Team Aston Martin Valkyrie: Alex Riberas, Marco Sorensen, #36 Alpine Endurance Team Alpine A424: Jules Gounon, Frederic Makowiecki, Mick Schumacher

Photo by: FIAWEC – DPPI

“For me this should be the target – to have a common platform to ensure a balanced field,” he said on the launch of its 2025 campaign in Maranello. “If we have to develop a rear hybrid system or whatever, I am still a fan of the concept of having a single platform.“

There appears to be no reason why the four-wheel-drive mandated in LMH should be a sticking point in the negotiations beginning this week. Its advantages were all but wiped out under the first round of convergence as the WEC prepared to allow in the initial wave of LMDh machinery in 2023. The deployment speed of the electric power via the front axle was raised from 120km/h for 2022 on its move from the technical regulations to the BoP and has been nailed on at 190km/h ever since for all but the original version of Peugeot’s 9X8 LMH. It means hybrid power is now pretty much only deployed in the straight line.

Peugeot talked a lot about four-wheel-drive when it announced its return to frontline sportscar racing, but it appears in favour the latest drive toward a communality of the rules. “Overall, our position is that there’s nothing stupid, crazy or irrational about trying to unify the technical regulations of the cars,” says Peugeot Sport technical director Olivier Jansonnie. “The question is about the time – when and how? This needs to be clarified.”

The question of timing is a pertinent one for Peugeot, because it has requested to be allowed to develop a replacement for the current version of the 9X8 introduced early last year. There certainly appears to be a will to bring the rules together sooner rather than later. “It would be great if it would be earlier,” says Laudenbach, who concede that he doesn’t “know if it is possible”. Famin goes further in suggesting that a timeframe focused on 2030 as a “problem”: the need for closer regulations is an urgent one.

The travails of the organisers in balancing the Hypercar field this season explain why Famin says that and also why a consensus to move towards a common platform is emerging. There also appears to be an agreement among the manufacturers, though not a unanimous one, that the BoP will remain a necessary evil in Hypercar.

It is, says Roos, one of the “foundations” of the rules, so you can’t just get drop it. For Famin it is an essential cost-reduction tool and he uses the word “ambitious” to describe any attempt to do away with it.

The manufacturers appear to be making all the right noises when it comes to convergence part 2. The WEC really does appear to be heading for a common set of regulations give or take. It might be just what’s needed for Hypercar to truly shine in this golden age.