The Automobile Club de l’Ouest claims it is unable to address the fuel capacity problem found in Alpine’s grandfathered LMP1 car, which stops its from reaching the intented fuel allocation during races.
After Nicolas Lapierre, Andre Negrao and Matthieu Vaxiviere finished second to Toyota in the season-opening Six Hours of Spa-Francorchamps, it was revealed that the grandfathered, ORECA-built LMP1 car was not able to run at the fuel allocation figure determined by the Hypercar Balance of Performance, as the amount of fuel allocated physically could not be contained in the car’s fuel tank.
As a result, the Alpine’s race stints at Spa would often be a couple of laps shorter than the Toyota, requiring an additional fuel stop towards the end of the race.
Alpine called for changes to be made to the Balance of Performance allocation to solve the problem, but Thierry Bouvet, the ACO’s Director of Competition, told selected media in the paddock at Portimao that the ACO is unable to address the issues raised by Alpine.
“Well, it’s a fact that at Spa, we could see that Alpine were doing less laps per stint than its competitor,” Bouvet said. “It is important to know that it’s a grandfathered car.
“And well, there is a limit to which we can play. And, you know, the fuel stint length was defined since probably two years ago, the reference was defined as being 12 laps per stint for Le Mans.”
Bouvet’s comment was in reference to the stint length for the Hypercar category, which had previously been based on the cars being able to run twelve laps at Le Mans, something the Alpine would likely not be able to achieve.
When Rebellion operated the Gibson-powered LMP1 car at last year’s 24 Hours of Le Mans, the car managed eleven laps per stints throughout the majority of the race, indicating that Alpine would likely not be able to hit that target.
Installing a larger fuel tank would likely not be an option for Alpine, as it is part of the homologation package for the car. One of the possible solutions would be to cut back on the energy allowance for the Hypercar category, therefore reducing the stint lenghts for Toyota and Glickenhaus.
However, Bouvet has stated that a reduction of the stint lengths for Hypercar is not an option for the ACO and indicated that the issue would not be able to be solved.
“It’s a difficult one, obviously, but yeah. It would seem unfair to reduce the number of laps for Hypercar. Because it was a known fact, since a long time.”
