The eagerly-awaited Automobile Club de l’Ouest pre-race press conference kept its promises, providing the road map for the coming years. This year’s Grand Marshal Jacky Ickx, Spirit of Le Mans trophy winner Sir Lindsay Owen Jones, Automobile Club de l’Ouest President Pierre Fillon, FIA WEC CEO Gérard Neveu and FIA Endurance Commission president Richard Mille outlined the future of endurance racing.
The discipline’s new premier league will come into play in 2020, introducing sleekly designed racing cars with distinctive branding - a new generation of supercars and hypercars. These remarkable machines will be fitted with a hybrid system, a front-axle KERS and will be as fast as current prototypes, with estimated Le Mans lap times of 3:20. Above all, these cars will be more affordable. The underlying idea of the new regulations is that performance should bear less relation to pocket depth. A quarter of today’s LMP1 budgets will suffice to be a top-class player tomorrow. There are no restrictions on engine suppliers. Many manufacturers have already expressed interest in the new generation of premier league endurance racing cars.
A collection of superb-looking machines, with varying technical specifications will be rivalling for the FIA World Endurance Championship podium at the 2021 Le Mans 24 Hours. As usual, the rules will be devised so as to obtain a balanced field of competitors, encourage competitiveness across the board and uphold the spirit of endurance racing.
Highlights of the conference: Visionary as ever, the ACO will be introducing a special class for hydrogen-powered cars as of 2024. An ACO/FIA workgroup is already in place, examining the issues involved in the new technology and consulting a wide range of experts on the subject.
The future is nothing if not ecological and the ACO announced a partnership with enterprise Carbon Forest+ to counter the carbon emissions of the race, starting this year.
Finally, the ACO has combined forces with the FIA World Endurance Championship and global technology and media company Motorsport Network to launch the Le Mans Esports Series, the final of which is scheduled to coincide with the 2019 24 Hours of Le Mans. See www.lemansesports.com for details.