The 2015 FIA World Endurance Championship is sure to go down in the archives of endurance racing history as one of the zenith years of technological progress and pace of development.
The rate of progress in lap times has been unique in modern sportscar competition, with the engineering and R&D battles fought just as intensely as those on the track.
We spoke to all three of the LMP1 manufacturers to gauge their opinions on what they make of this exciting time in endurance racing and how they have adapted their skills in seeking the competitive edge.
“I think this year we have seen development at an incredible rate,” said Toyota Technical Director Pascal Vasselon. “We have had lap times improved by 3-5 seconds per lap on normal circuits and more than that at Le Mans. Now it is all about developing every single element of your package, you can't afford to be short on one or two elements as we have, you have to develop every area. What we have seen in the WEC has been very impressive in terms of technology development.”
Audi and Porsche have waged a ferocious battle at the front of the field this season and both of their technical heads agree that the interest in the series is at an all-time high because of the fascination with the technical war and the sporting battles it has created.
“The performance and development are at a fascinating level at the moment,” agreed Head of LMP at Audi, Chris Reinke. “We have seen the battle this year has been intense and close on many occasions. For 2016, we will have more to announce in around 10 days’ time. Our target for this weekend is to end the 2015 season on a high.”
For Porsche, 2015 has seen a remarkable season of success. The Le Mans 24 Hours victory in June triggered a superb run of results which has laid the foundations for the marque taking the Manufacturers’ crown at Shanghai earlier this month.
“The cars have to be optimised in every single area, I think we all agree on this,” said Porsche Technical Director, Alex Hitzinger. “We have probably gained in equal amounts of performance in most areas. We have to keep optimising everything. From our point of view we could see at the end of 2014 that there was a lot of performance potential as we were quite aggressive on the concept. What will be interesting will be to see the next step from ’15 to ’16 as I think it will be a lot more difficult.”
Sam Smith
Photo: BAHRAIN INTERNATIONAL CIRCUIT (SAKHIR, BAHRAIN), PRE-EVENT PRESS CONFERENCE, THURSDAY 19 NOVEMBER 2015. From left to right: Alex Hitzinger (Porsche Team), Chris Reinke (Audi Sport), Pascal Vasselon (Toyota Racing).
