Pascal Vasselon, technical director of Toyota Motorsport GmbH, believes that the ACO and FIA can not afford to have the Balance of Performance process for the newly announced LMDh class be politically driven, instead saying it has to be a ‘scientific process’.
The new LMDh class, which was announced as part of ACO and IMSA’s convergence announcement in January, has been confirmed to feature a Balance of Performance system as the LMDh cars are eventually supposed to share the track with the Le Mans Hypercars that will make their debut in the 2020/21 FIA World Endurance Championship season.
When asked by invited media at the previous round of the championship at COTA if Toyota has any concerns regarding the balancing of LMDh and LMH, Vasselon responded:
“ACO/FIA claims that the Balance of Performance, which is in the plan, will be the best ever. And then, we can not suspect that there will be any imbalance.
Because by principle, the Balance of Performance which is coming, can not be politically driven. So your concern, no, Balance of Performance, it has to be a scientific process.
This is want we want to believe, it is presented as a scientific process where there is normally no way to politically drive it.”
Vasselon also expressed he would not be against competing against LMDh machinery as the only LMH manufacturer.
“That’s what we understood from the convergence announcement in Daytona. We were already within the LMH category. We are already balancing two options, so prototype and Hypercar,” he continued. “Here, conceptually, what are we doing? We are balancing a third option.
Why not? It’s the same principle, there is nothing really extremely difficult. Only we have to make sure that the performance working point is similar.”