GT1-Style Hypercars Are Coming To Le Mans In 2020

The current LMP1 cars of the WEC are incredible machines, but the enormous costs have meant that in the space of three years the class has gone from having four manufacturer teams to just one - Toyota. The emergence of some privateer squads has prevented LMP1 from becoming a complete joke, but the FIA together with the ACO (the organisers of the Le Mans 24 Hours) realised something needed to be done in the wake of the manufacturer exodus.

Therefore some new regulations are coming into effect for 2020 and will focus on two main things - reducing costs, and making the cars look less like spaceships and more like actual cars. After all, allowing manufacturers to display their own identity is a part of the reason why GT racing has exploded in popularity the world over - why couldn’t the same thing work in prototypes?

The new ‘hypercar’ styling is a major throwback to another popular era of endurance racing - GT1. Back in the late 1990s rules stipulated that road versions had to be built of any race car, which essentially led to manufacturers cooking up purpose-built racing machines and then making a couple of hopelessly impractical (but endlessly awesome) road legal versions. Think Porsche 911 GT1 Straßenversion, Mercedes CLK-GTR and - coolest of all - the Toyota GT-One.

There’s a major emphasis on ensuring the cars in the new class (which is yet to be named) retain some sort of visual link to road cars and for that reason, aerodynamics will be generated more from the underbody than from the additions of extra bits on top of the cars.

Engine wise, they’ll still be hybrid, as the front wheels will be powered by a 270bhp KERS unit which any manufacturers must make available for purchase by any privateer teams that want in on the act. The meat of the power will still come from a good old internal combustion engine, though - teams can use pretty much any engine configuration they want to power the rear wheels which will be regulated to around 700bhp. All in, that means almost 1000bhp and cars which should theoretically be able to lap Le Mans just a couple of seconds off the pace of the current cars.

Another aim is to cut costs. But instead of introducing a hard cost cap (like Formula 1 is aiming for), it’s hoped that the new regulations will naturally slash the costs of competing by a whopping 75 per cent.

Powerful hybrid sports prototypes which bear a resemblance to modern hypercars, cost a fraction of the price to build and race of the current LMP1 cars, and a ruleset scheduled to last for at least five years. It sounds like an ideal recipe to entice manufacturers back to the WEC and Le Mans - but who exactly is interested?

Well, five manufacturers were involved in the discussions - Ferrari, McLaren, Aston Martin, Toyota and Ford, and it’s pretty easy to imagine some of them wanting to get involved. A McLaren Senna GTR race car, anyone? On top of those, there’s also been a rumour that Brabham might be interested in getting its new BT62 involved.

Excited? You should be!