McLaren could use their upcoming Sabre model in the Hypercar class. The car looks Le Mans-ish already Image Unavailable, Please Login
I don't know if it's "race-ready" from the aero point of view, but it looks stunning. I wouldn't mind seeing that at Le Mans !
Not enough to put a fight against the Hypercars, that are road cars only in theory. Looks good though. It shows that a car can have aero stuff without looking weirdo like the Senna.
Jesus, Mclaren really have had their money's worth out of that tub and engine! 10 years old and counting...
Isn't that very clever of them? Who sees the chassis anyway? As for their engine, it has been thoroughly developed over the years. Just like a Porsche or a Ferrari engine...
Road going version only needs to be “similar” to the actual race car and will probably look like this: Image Unavailable, Please Login https://www.carscoops.com/2020/09/toyota-gr-super-sport-hypercar-makes-spectacular-debut-at-le-mans/
Ferrari are rich enough to design, and build their own LMH chassis tested perhaps,. They may not be able to race under IMSA, or sell their car in the States which is a big market to them. Porsche and Audi went a different way and will save themselves lots of money. They will use a chassis already homologated for their next LMDh car that will be elligible to race in both series (IMSA & WEC). We will see what IMSA says about LMH, but they have already signified Glickenhaus that his cars won't be welcomed, I read.
There is no roadcar version of the Toyota Hypercar, nor will there ever be. Their car was designed to the "race car" side of the hypercar rules. The "targa type" image of the Toyota hypercar is not a street version of their hypercar. It is just a drivetrain mule.
Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login https://www.carscoops.com/2021/01/bykolles-racing-unveils-its-le-mans-hypercar-racer-including-road-legal-variant/
But it´s cheap!!! What´s not to like? It´s not that manufacturers are queing to enter Hypercars. I guess ACO will allow a pair of years of glory for them, just to please Toyota, that after all kept Le Mans going these years, and then make rules that favour LMDh. Nobody is going to enter LMDhs if they can´t beat the Hypercars, so what´s the point of building a Hypercar if someone can beat you with a Dallara chassis at a fraction of the cost. I still don´t know when the Hypercar rules lost the "road version" thing. Now they´re just like cheaper and washed out LMPs.
It's mystery to me too. Forcing them to have a road car profile would have stopped many of the aero excess seen in LMP. Also, hopefully it would have made them carry some visual DNA from their carmaker. As it is, LMH will simply be glorified LMP1.
I always doubted that this was going to work. Two things could happen: teams not wanting to build road cars just for homologation and teams building fake road cars just for homologation. In the end, both things happened.
Th eriginal hypercar rules never had a "street car" version. The original rules were for a purpose built race car. But these rules were very different from then current LMP rules. The hypercar rules were the single best set of rules ever done for a race car. The ACO did a bloody brilliant job in generating them. Cars were to be hybrids, electric motor of around 300 hp up front, IC engine in rear of around 700 hp. 4 wheel drive, active aero, regen, etc. Cool part was the ACO pretty much left the type of IV engine you used "free". As long as it weighed a minimum amount and had no more than 'X" horspower just about anything went. In the end they kept it to gas engines but they were willing to open it up to diesel, steam, turbine, hamsters in a cage, anything. And aero wise they no longer had any rules controlling the shape of the car, size of wings, etc. Instead they said your car had to have a CdA (Drag coefficient times frontal area) of at least 1. And then the CLA (Downforce coefficient times frontal area) of no more than 4. So yur L/D was, at max 4-1. How you got there was up to you. As the ACO told me- If you got Mack trucks as a sponsor and could hit the aero targets with a truck like shape-have at it. Really great rules. How race car rules should be done. But then the OEM's started to complain. They wanted to run their top end street cars in the race but no matter what they did they would never be competitive with these type race cars. So the forced the ACO to allow for production type cars to be allowed in. Problem was one car had a 900 hp IC engine and no electrical motor, another was only 2 wheel drive, no production car matched the configuration of the hypercar class. So the ACO wrote a second set or rules to cover OEM cars. Issue was/is all of these cars are very different to each other. So what do you do for rules to make all "equal". In the end the ACO was forced to use the infamous "BOP" to cover all of the various cars. And we all now how well that has worked in the LM-GTE class! But the ACO caved in, made a set of rules to placate the OEMS, added BOP to help "equalize them all". And you know what happened? Not one of the OEM's that pushed for these rule changes actually committed to doing a car for LeMans. I was at the ACO/FIA meeting in Paris when the ACO asked, point blank, everyone at the meeting, if they would commit to doing a car for LeMans. Toyota said yes-per the race car rules set. Glickenhaus said yes, per the race car rules set, Kolles said most likely yes, to race car rules set and I said yes, per race car rules set. And then Aston Martin answered: Nope-No car at all. And then Ferrari: Nope-No car at all. Porsche: Nope-No car at all. McLaren: Nope, no car at all. Nissan: Nope GM: Nope Ford: Nope BMW: Nope Audi: Nope Bentley: Nope and on and on and on. My client got sick and tired of all of the political BS going on, did not want to do a car that required BOP, so they pulled out-leaving me with no program. (Still hurting big time $$ wise from that.) So all of the OEMS, who screamed bloody murder to the ACO about adding their OEM "supercars" to the ACO hypercar class, threatened to pull all of their other race programs from the ACO/FIA (2-3 OEMS did just that-I was there.), threatened to race their GT cars in a competitor Series. (Like GT3), etc never did step up and commit to doing an OEM based hypercar. Meanwhile months of time had passed, nobody was sure what the final rules for any of the hypercars would be, ACO was looking at changing the race car hypercar rules to help the OEM cars be competitive, etc. All a giant mess. So now we get a very bare bones car spec in LMd-h, basically an LMP 2 car with a piss-ass poor/weak as can be hybrid system-that is going to be a spec bit of kit, cars based on the IMSA DP class chassis, from 4 mfg's. (Which leaves me out.) And they have slowed these cars down so much that a current LMP2 car is fasterat LeMans, so they have had to slow them down now also. So now the LMP2 class and teh GTS class will be close to the same in lap times, unless they slow the GT cars down. And you will have the GTE carts faster in top end, with P2 cars better around corners. But will make racing very tough for these classes-always somebody in front slower or behind faster than you. All a truly sad tale of what it could have been versus what it is now.
Thank you for taking the trouble to explain it in this detail. Can you mention who your client was? or is it confidential. I did not know of another program besides Toyota, Glickenhaus and Kolles. It was my understanding that the second set of rules were written for the Aston Martin Valkyrie. Was this program canceled by Lawrence Stroll or was it really never a program?
My client was a Japanese one. Cannot say more than that. The OEM rules push was "lead" by Aston Martin. Aston was hoping for a large cadre of customers for their LeMans Valkyrie race car, but they never got any customers to come up with cash. I tried to work a deal with them and my Japanese client-actually spent a good deal of time in UK talking with them. But it was clear the program was more a hope on their part than a real deal. In the end AM just couldn't do it on their own nickel.