Sportscar Engineering

- A Discussion on FIA WEC Spa Francorchamps Amateur Driver Analysis Sportscars has a rich history with amateur ‘Gentleman Drivers’ taking their cars racing; originally being a sport for the wealthy taking their new toys across Europe to go racing. Despite the sport becoming more competitive and focused around professional teams and drivers at the top of the rankings the Amateurs remained. There has been and will always be a route for anyone with the means to take part in the top Sportscar races like Le Mans and Daytona – most likely sharing a car with professionals. How is this Pro-Am format regulated however? First off, how do you classify an Amateur Driver? You could theoretically have a multimillionaire paying for the car and team around them, who also is in their own right driving at a professional standard. They’re amateurs, paying their way to a drive, right? This would be unfair to the spirit of the inclusivity of Gentleman Drivers; who would spend the big money to race at a wor...

A new era dawned at the FIA WEC 6 Hours of Spa Francorchamps; not only did we see a new category get christened along with the next-gen regulations for car design, but also a shift to Balance of Performance (BoP) being used in Prototype racing alongside GTE. It is a paradigm shift in the way to run a sportscars world championship – gone are the days of an EoT principle, being given for example an allowance of energy and trying to get the most out of it with your car. If you got more than the opponents, then you have earned an advantage on race day and deserved it, right?! Freedom to develop is costly, and when unconstrained it allows for a spending war that only ever increases cost as each tenth of a second per lap becomes more expensive to find the faster a car gets. Cautious OEMs are unwilling to join this spending war despite wanting to do sportscars, and those taking part grow dissatisfied with the costs, so grid sizes are at risk of collapse. It is clear a change was needed, so wh...