Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus says that the development of its 007 Hypercar has remained unaffected by the various rule changes implented to the Le Mans Hypercar formula.
The American boutique supercar maker has had to face multiple hurdle in car development ever since committing to Le Mans Hypercar, which included several changes to engine regulations, which forced Glickenhaus to revert from what was originally an Alfa Romeo-sourced V6 to a V8 provided by French manufacturer Pipo Moteurs.
Glickenhaus claims out that Aston Martin’s entry with its Cosworth-V12 powered Valkyrie led to a change in engine regulations and doubts it would have been possible to run engines of such caliber reliably.
“Aston Martin’s diddling added a huge engineering challenge for us and, most likely Toyota,” Glickenhaus told Motorsport Week. “Before Aston claimed it wanted to join, the requirements for the ICE engine output were achievable with improvements on existing technologies. When Aston lobbied to increase the HP to be over 800HP in endurance tune, it raised the challenge.
There is not a single engine in the world capable of making 800HP in over 24H endurance tune as a stressed member of a car. And we studied everything: every existing LMP1 and endurance engine, the DPI engines, etcetera.”
“We were able to solve this by changing our engine (which we had already engineered the rear of the vehicle, as well as the heat/cooling requirements around). We are fortunate that Pipo Moteurs is as creative as passionate about Le Mans and the WEC as we are, and their proposal to combine two of their inline 4 World Rally motors provided a brilliant solution.”
Last week, the FIA confirmed changes to regulations for Le Mans Hypercar in order to bring them in line with the draft technical regulations for LMDh. When the regulations for LMH were finalized at Le Mans last year, the power output was set at roughly 750 horsepower, with hybrid power capped at 270 horsepower.
Since LMH and LMDh are supposed to compete alongside each other when the latter hits the track on its proposed 2022 date, that power figure was brought down to 670 horsepower to match the proposed power output for LMDh.
Glickenhaus believes that the reduced power output will be an advantage as the engine will now run at a lower level than intended.
“When the new rules were announced, it gave us a tremendous advantage. We are now changing the tune of an engine that could have taken over 30 hours in endurance tune at 800+HP instead to put out the new lower requirements.
Other engines will be at the edge of their 24 hour max output. Our engine will be massively understressed. In fact, I would not be surprised if our Pipo engine could run two 24 Hour Le Mans races back to back before it needed a rebuild.”
“The new lower weight is also not an issue, as we were several hundred kilograms below the prior minimum weight requirement. We were previously designing the car with massive ballast to meet the minimum weight, and once we remove some of the ballast we will easily meet the new weight with no problem.”
The American outfit has also released a new set of renders for the 007, which is scheduled to first hit the track in early 2021. Contrary to previous images, the car now features a sharkfin like the current crop of LMP1 and LMP2 machinery.
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