Speaking in a media pre-season call with selected LMGT3 drivers, D’station Racing’s Marco Sorensen welcomed the FIA World Endurance Championship’s removal of the LMP2 class which he feels intruded on the former GTE class’ racing spectacle.
The three-time WEC champion said: “It’s nice not to have so much traffic because they had to slow down the LMP2 so much in the past for the Hypercars,” Sorensen told media including Motorsport Week.
“It was a whole mess where the slower the LMP2s actually got, the more annoying it got for the GT[E] cars. There’s so many different variables this year that it’s not only that we’re losing the LMP2s in some races, but it’s actually also going to be because you have the ABS now [with GT3 cars], the racing is going to be a little bit more contact everywhere.
“Everyone is going to be able to brake late. All this kind of stuff also puts a different twist to it.”
With the arrival of Hypercar, LMP2 faced a power reduction all in order to distance its race pace from the new Hypercars.
However, in doing so, it brought them closer to the GTE classes, and so without LMP2 except at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, LMGT3’s 18 entries are expected to race closer and harder.
Team WRT’s Augusto Farfus, who is also a GTP driver since last year, drew upon the arrangement in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, where at certain rounds they pair up a prototype and a GTD category – or two.
He spoke on how having two categories could benefit the television broadcasting of the WEC for the future seasons to come.
“In IMSA most of the time they are only two classes, and you see how much attention and how close the GT3 racing is,” Farfus said.
“The Hypercar is a class which is a lot more sophisticated, a lot faster.
“But I’ve seen in America that [during] many times the GT class gives better racing, because the cars – to a certain extent – allow more contact, more close racing.
“And if you see in IMSA especially, there is as much attention on the GTD class, there as much as on the LMDh.
“So I think it’s a matter of time that people will understand.
“Of course, [with] the WEC in the past having these three classes, it was not so easy also to broadcast the races, because there was always something going on in the classes.
“And now we’re gonna have pretty much two distinct classes running together. So I can’t wait to see the first time that we’re going to have the same manufacturer winning both classes.”
Except for Le Mans on 15-16 June, the WEC will work with solely two classes for the first time, albeit each at high capacity numbers with nine LMGT3 manufacturers and 18 entries, whilst there are 19 entries in the Hypercar category.
The two classes differ greatly in terms of their race pace, and so the absence of LMP2 – like the removal of LMP3 from the IMSA WeatherTech Championship – will enable more broadcasting recognition on the LMGT3 class, whilst distancing themselves from Hypercar until they meet as lapped traffic.
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