Two fewer Porsches, one more Ferrari for Le Mans....

Expect more casualties along the way.
Covid-19 will also affect some sponsors.

 

not to mention the entire sports car racing calendar being condensed into 12 weeks is going to make it logistically impossible for many teams.

IMSA is in laguna Seca on Sept 6, LM24 is Sept 20, IMSA is at Mid Ohio the following weekend (Sept 25-7). that's a big challenge.

 

Unlike Corvette, Aston or Porsche, Ferrari doesn't run a factory team in GTE, do they?
That may explain why not many run in Pro.

 

That maybe why Porsche pulled out their 2 IMSA entries from Le Mans.
Even for them, it would be a logistic nightmare.

 

Exactly.

Racing news sites so desperate for any sort of content looking to bolster their clicks by reporting this
(and they're ALL reporting it) and perhaps the biggest racing non-story of the year (so far). Then, come into the F-Chat racing forums and there it is again, posted as fresh news.

The logistics of packing up a two car team, all the spares, tools, etc. that go with them (not to mention
team members) from the U.S. to France and back is simply enormous. Reading anything more into this
than what it is being pure folly.

BHW

 

Corvette has also pulled out of Le Mans. I highly doubt the race will be run this year at all.

https://racer.com/2020/05/11/corvette-racing-withdraws-from-le-mans/?fbclid=IwAR2Z_-uW7dGHBBl8LAZWGtjVU4j3ijMvzHyNlOE2TrPdbCnX0l-PDwnt4d4

 

nah, they'll just scrape the bottom of the barrel until they have a full grid.

 

Truthfully unless they located some newfound speed Corvette was the slowest in class.

 

It is all BoP

 

nice article

 

I can see this being the end for GTE, at least GTE PRO. GTE AM can survive for a few more years with trickle down factory cars, there are a lot of them out there. The entries for LeMans have collapsed almost as fast as LMP1 did, although a year or so later. We’ve gone from 18 cars in 2019 to only what, seven I think for this years race. It’s easy to say it’s just the Corona virus, but the writing has been on the wall for a while. Ford Veni Vidi Veci’d and left at the end of the 18-19 season. BMW pulled out of Europe last year and now we are losing the Porsche IMSA effort from LeMAns as well as Corvette. Yes I’m only talking LeMAns here, but does anyone thin any of the factories would have poured in the cumulative hundreds of millions if to run in the category if it wasn’t part of LeMans? No way. I think it’s another class that’s priced itself out of the market place.


I think this could be the final nail in the coffin for GTE. It may limp on into 2021, but I see a GT3 Pro class coming to replace it if the ACO can play nice with SRO. Longer lap times are already on the horizon for Hyper cars and LMDh that means LMP2 will have to be reigned in a bit, now with GTE dying a natural death it's probably the perfect time for GT3 to step up. That's not necessarily a bad thing as GT3 cars have got stupid fast and expensive over the last few years, although they are a bargain compared to GTE. Today GT4 is much closer to what GT3 used to, and should, be. I wonder if GT3 back fills GTE they will loosen the reigns on them slightly as they are all BOP'd down to an artificially slow pace?

 

I can tell you that here in France there is huge will to see the race happen, it will happen unless the summer generates too many new virus infections due to beach promiscuity etc. Nobody can predict that, we have to wait for early August to see if the numbers flare up again and no one can predict that answer.

It doesn't matter if a few also ran's declare defeat early but of course the logistical nightmare of doing all this safely costs more money...