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Very predictably the bop for Spa is very unfavorable for Ferrari, paying for its recent wins...this is plain rigging....I don't understand how mnaufacturers accept this system... https://www.motorsport.com/wec/news/wec-bop-to-benefit-aston-martin-for-spa-after-poor-start-to-2025/10720516/
The idea for BoP was to level the playing field, not give different entrants an advantage. It seems that that idea has been forgotten and now the idea is to alternate who has the unfair advantage from race to race. If BoP was really fair, every top car from every entrant would qualify at the exact same speed, provided no one sandbags, of course. How close are we coming to that?
I think a handicap,formula is never going to please everyone. It's just an attempt to bring more constructors to the series. The BoP has been successful doing that in the WEC, so far. I remember a time when endurance was only Ferrari v. Ford, Ferrari v. Porsche, Ferrari v. Matra, later Porsche v. Jaguar, etc ... and the rest of the grid was filled by no-hopers. We also had for years a Porsche total hegemony followed by an AUDI decade of complete domination, without much opposition. Now we have Ferrari, Toyota, Porsche, Cadillac, BMW, Alpine, Aston Martin, and Peugeot competing, soon Genesis, Ford and McLaren. I personally think it's better than one make pouring money to dominate, discouraging other brands from participating.
The idea was that the Hypercar rules were "self-BOPed" through the standarization of horsepower, downforce ratio, etc... Then they had to shoehorn in the Daytona prototypes, that ACO wanted a good race for the centenary, add the usual lack of transparency and all went south.
Ferrari sets the bar! F1 team could do some learning. Under 2:00 around spa is flying. Image Unavailable, Please Login Hope they can keep it up for Lemans.
Can’t believe how they successfully developed the car since last year to improve aero and mechanical efficiency, Now we know for sure all of this isn’t only related to BOP rules.
Jeez, they´re going to be emasculated at Le Mans. Maybe a bit of sandbagging wouldn´t be out of place.
Could have been so much worse....that bit of track may be iconic but it also generates a ton of accidents...
Le raidillon might be iconic but it is actually just a clumsily drawn short cut that did not exist in the first years of Spa. Nowadays the compression at the bottom, then the cars getting light as they approach the top, plus zero visibility as they go over the blind brow and the bottleneck design of the barriers on each side, much improved yes but still too tight because of the steep rise on the left and steep drop on the right, which bounce crashed cars into the path of the following ones, CF the last two fatal accidents there, Anthoine Hubert and the Dutch kid...makes it a death trap in waiting. Again and again. My first racing school instructor from 1986 died there in 1992, Ian Taylor, whose school was at Thruxton in the UK.
