Automobile Club de l’Ouest has confirmed the new Hypercar regulations, which will start from the season 2020/21.
They held a press conference today Friday, putting a bit more meat on the board regarding the regulations, with just about 13 months until the cars will hit the track in an official session for the first time.
It’s a very broad set of rules for the new top category in the FIA World Endurance Championship.
The cars can either be based on a road going hyper car, being converted into a racing car – or it can be a prototype with hypercar look.
Only the second part of of that line is news compared to the original concept that was presented previously. The new rules will run for at least 5 years, so the manufacturers can start building the cars without worrying, that they will be outdated in a short time.
If the manufacturers wants to convert a road going car, they will have to build at least 20 of them within a 2-year period.
The cars will have a minimum weight of 1100 kg and have around 750 bhp. The estimated average laptimes on the Le Mans circuit is aimed to be 3:30. So that’s about 8 seconds slower than the Toyota’s currently are doing throughout the race.
All cars will run on tires from the same tire manufacturer, and will run on the same kind of fuel.
If the manufactures want it, they can put hybrid technology on the cars, on the front wheels only. It’s only allowed to kick in at 120 kph on a dry track, and 150-160 kph on wet track. That rule is to limit the advantage that Toyota Gazoo Racing currently has exiting the corners, where they can out accelerate the other LMP1 cars without hybrid.
The plan is to equalize the cars hybrid or not, prototype or road going car. To do that they will implement BOP, like we know from the GTE categories. But the cars has to pass the same crash tests and safety standards as the current LMP1 cars.
Both Toyota Gazoo Racing and Aston Martin Racing confirmed their involvement in the new problem from next year. Glickenhaus has previously said that they are planning to enter the category with two cars, but not until Season 2. Bykolles is also working on a new car, but details are yet to be confirmed.
So there actually isn’t much news in today’s announcement, other than the cars from now on will have to resemble road cars. If the manufactures wants to build a prototype only, they can do that, as long as they look like the others on the aerodynamic side of things.