The opening race of the 2024 FIA World Endurance Championship season in Qatar saw Porsche dominate with its 963 prototype. The German manufacturer scored the first pole position and win for an LMDh car in WEC history, recorded the fastest lap by some margin and left the others literally in its dust.
Australian driver Matt Campbell, recently part of the winning Porsche crews at the Daytona 24 Hours and Bathurst 12 Hour, recorded the fastest lap time in the 10-hour race of 1m39.748s. His No. 5 Porsche was the only car to break the 1m40s barrier, and went nearly a second quicker than the sister Penske-run car, which won the race and recorded a best lap of 1m40.592s. Porsche filled the top three positions, and the eyes immediately turned towards the WEC’s new balance of performance system which takes some details of the process behind closed doors.
However, there were a few mitigating circumstances to this early-season result, which have to be explained before getting into the BoP.
The first was that the track particularly suited the 963 and its aero performance window. The smooth surface, with low-degradation tarmac, played into the Porsche’s hands. The minimum race weight of the car, at 1048kg per the BoP table, was higher than the Peugeot 9X8 at 1030kg and the Cadillac V-Series.R at 1032kg. But it was still lighter than the Ferrari 499P (1075kg) and Toyota GR010 Hybrid (1089kg). On a track that was particularly sensitive to the weight of the car, Porsche had an advantage over its nearest Hypercar challengers.
In addition to the two-car Penske works effort, Porsche was represented by customer teams Proton Competition and JOTA, and so there was no option to hide performance in a bid to outsmart the BoP. The customer teams run flat out, and Penske therefore needs to do the same. Ferrari now also supplies a customer car, but that is very much under control of the AF Corse team which also runs two factory entries, making it less clear-cut.
Aside from Porsche, Peugeot also had a strong race. The wingless 9X8 will be replaced by a major evolution for the next WEC round at Imola in April. In Qatar, the French marque led during the opening hour and was on course to finish second before its No. 93 car ran out of fuel on the penultimate lap. The team was still working to establish what happened at the last pit stop, whether it was a mechanical failure of the pit equipment or human error.
Lusail International Circuit also suited Peugeot’s car. A flat and smooth surface meant that the underfloor aero worked effectively. The 9X8 traditionally suffers from overheating its rear tyres, but with low degradation on the new surface it had its best run in the WEC to date.
Tyre performance was a big headache for teams during the weekend. Many cars suffered from graining, notably when the wind blew desert sand onto the surface during the practice sessions. As the wind ebbed and flowed, so the characteristic of the tyre changed, rendering much of practice unrepresentative of the race.
In the end, there was little wind on race day, which made life easier for teams. Warming up the tyres was particularly critical: push too hard too early and you damage the rubber, as Toyota’s Brendon Hartley found out in qualifying. What confused many of the teams in the WEC paddock was how quickly the Penske cars were able to generate heat into their tyres without damaging them.
So, Porsche had the overall speed over a lap, over a stint, and excellent tyre warm up and wear, so the question then was: what will happen to its BoP for the next race at Imola? There certainly were some worried faces at Porsche post-race given Campbell’s speed. But WEC organisers the FIA and ACO promised to play a different game with the BoP than they have ever done before.
Key to the new regulations is unpredictability which was welcome news in an over-policed system. Technical figures from the FIA and ACO explained to the media that they will take an average of race laps from the fastest car of each manufacturer. Whether that was 20 percent fastest laps, 40 per cent or 60 per cent, they would not confirm. If they did confirm, they explained, the manufacturers would play the game.
The talk in the paddock was that it would take 20 per cent of the fastest laps, which only would determine the outright speed potential of each of the cars. The more laps you take into account, the more tyre degradation and set up would come to be considered. The FIA and ACO left the door open to change, and I wonder if they didn’t feed the teams the 20 per cent figure to give them something. In reality, they will take whatever data they feel like using. Then they will overlay the data with their own lap time simulation, and overlay that with historic data from last year.
After that, the FIA and ACO will have a figure of the maximum potential of each of the manufacturers’ cars. They will then take a view on whether a car is outside its expected window. How big was that window? Again, no one could confirm but it’s thought to be about half a second. Keeping the teams in the dark is how the FIA and ACO plan to play this question, too.
Then, there was the criteria by which the BoP moderators will adjust the performance. A car that is clearly too fast will be acted upon far quicker than a car that is too slow. The BoP is not there to compensate for poor team or driver performance, say the engineers. It’s there to give equal chance to teams and is up to them to meet that potential. If it is clear that a team is performing to its maximum potential and is still outside the window, then the FIA and ACO will act. But by how much, when and how is also not information open to teams.
That, predictably, left the teams frustrated. Of course they were, but the fudge factor is that this is only way this can work. The flip side is what happens if we have a race like Qatar, where one manufacturer clearly was faster. Was that circuit-dependent, or BoP-dependent?
Unfortunately for the performance balancing engineers, both of the first two races of the WEC season in Qatar and Imola are new to the championship, as is the newly refurbished Sao Paolo in July. The visit to Austin in September will be a first for Hypercar.
A track-specific BoP rather relies on information and that’s in short supply for four of the rounds this year. The FIA will be depending on simulation data for these circuits and had better get it right or their ‘behind closed doors’ approach will be questioned even further.
The question is: how much were the others playing a BoP game of their own? Few in Qatar believed that what we saw was the absolute truth.
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