This weekend's 4 Hours of Silverstone marks the start of the 2019/20 FIA World Endurance Championship. In a four-part series, Motorsport Week takes a look at all of the four classes in detail. Who are the title favorites? Who will spring a surprise? First up: the championship's top class: LMP1. Will the all-conquering Toyota TS050 Hybrids finally be defeated, or will the Japanese marque dominate again?
The upcoming season marks the final year for LMP1, or at the very least, the final year for the car that has dominated it for the last year: Toyota’s all-conquering TS050 Hybrid. The Japanese giant, which won the last two editions of the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the driver’s championship and the manufacturer’s title, has already referred to the upcoming campaign as a farewell tour for the trusty TS050 before it gives way to the GR Super Sport Concept-based hypercar.
While the prospect of the two Toyota’s facing an ever-thinning privateer opposition in a class they are tipped to win comfortably might seem like deja-vu, things are somewhat different in season 8. For a start, the golden boy has walked. Fernando Alonso, after winning everything there is to win in WEC, called it quits on his adventure and moved on to pastures new. In his place is F1 refugee Brendon Hartley, who ironically was Toyota’s rival when he last raced in LMP1 with Porsche. The Kiwi joins fellow F1 refugees Kazuki Nakajima and Sebastien Buemi in the #8 car, while Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi and Jose Maria Lopez return to the #7.
The TS050 has also been given a new nose and a fresh lick of paint and is ready for what, on paper, seems like a fairly easy title defence. But based on what we saw during the Prologue in Barcelona, it might not be such a foregone conclusion.
Rebellion were the closest thing Toyota had to a rival in 2018, even picking up a victory in Silverstone after the dominant hybrids were disqualified on technical grounds. The Swiss outfit won the privateer fight last season, and thanks to renewed Equivalence of Technology (EoT) restrictions, the R13-Gibsons appear to be a lot closer than they were before, ending the final session of the Prologue just 0.2s behind the Toyotas. Add the newly announced Success Ballast to this, which will add additional restrictions to cars based on the championship standings, and we might just have an actual fight on our hands.
Despite this, it’s not all sunshine and roses for Rebellion, who announces after Le Mans that there would only be one car on the entry list. The team tested with two in Spain, but then made the decision to employ Norman Nato, Bruno Senna and Gustavo Menezes in the #1 car without mentioning a second full-season entry. The team later announced that Loic Duval, Nathanaël Berthon and Pipo Derani had been brought on to pilot the #3, but said that was for Silverstone only. At this point, it’s unclear how many Rebellions we’ll see on the grid for round two at Fuji.
There is, however, a third player in this drama. Ginetta, which was on the grid at the very start of the Super Season but withdraw soon thereafter, has returned with two improved G60-LT-P1s. The British marque, now running under the Team LNT banner, has switched from Mecachrome to AER engines, now running similar engines to what SMP Racing used in their cars.
The team ran two cars and tested a variety of drivers during the four session, but has ultimately settled for a line-up that can best be described as a mixture of experience and youthful speed. In the #5 car, factory ace Charlie Roberson will be sharing drivin duties with Ben Hanley and Egor Oruzdhev. Both men have experience in the non-hybrid LMP1 craft, with Hanley having served with Dragonspeed during the Super Season, while Orudzhev was one of SMP Racing’s drivers before the Russian team withdrew.
The #6, meanwhile, features a somewhat less youthful line-up, but one with a lot more sportscar experience. Mike Simpson, also a factory driver, was originally supposed to be joined by Guy Smith and Chris Dyson. Smith is perhaps best known for the Bentley Speed 8 to Le Mans glory in 2003, but also formed a longstanding partnership with Dyson in the previous decade. The two raced together in what is now known as the IMSA Weathertech Sportscar Championship, winning the American Le Mans Series together in 2011.
This was before Dyson hurt his wrist driving a Trans-Am race at Road America, which forced Team LNT to replace Dyson with Mazda Team Joest ace Oliver Jarvis. Ginetta was the slowest of the three teams during the Prologue, but then again, that was to be expected. They spent over a year on the sidelines and are up against arguably the two fastest and most experienced LMP1 outfits.
But it would be foolish to count the British underdog out just yet. They might need some time to get up to speed, but by the end of the Prologue, the G60 was also less then a second off the times set by Toyota. They might not be there immediately, but if they continue their current trajectory, they could turn out to be the surprise of LMP1’s last hurrah.
Discussion about this post