After hearing so much about WEC and how it's meant to be an all together different class of racing, I'm planning to start watching come April - I may even attempt to attend 6 hours of Silverstone and it's only down the road from me.....
However, I'm at a loss as I don't actually understand how the series works. Could someone give me an run down of 'everything you need to know.'
Firstly, different car classes confuse me. Are they all competing in the same championship? How are points awarded? How does qualifying work? Basically, anything I need to know, please do tell.
I'm not a regular watcher of the WEC but what I can tell you is that the easiest way to look at it, is as if each class is in a different race. So you have 4 races going on at the same time: the LMP1 race, the LMP2 race, the GTE Pro and the GTE AM. Cars from different classes won't fight each other as they're in separate races. Each class has its own separate championship.
There's huge speed differences between classes, and the races are 6 hours long, so there's constant traffic of cars lapping each other. This means that cars rarely get to ever do a clean lap without any traffic, therefore losing as little time as possible in traffic and avoid incidents whilst lapping/being lapped, are hugely valuable skills. Also taking advantage of traffic to overtake others. It's not uncommon to watch for example the GT cars battling for the lead whilst being caught by the LMP1 cars at the same time, with a LMP2 car in the mix. These awkward situations bring high risk but also chances to overtake.
Other important differences to F1 are that the cars are shared by various drivers (usually 3), as the races are just too long for one single driver, therefore the 3 of them will have to drive with the same setup. Having quick driver changes will be important to strategy (this is related to the design of the car - certain cars are quicker to get in/out of), and strategy will be more complex than F1 as there's refuelling, tyres last a lot longer, and there's far more pitstops in a race as the races are much longer! You're also pretty much guaranteed there'll be at least one safety car in 6 hours, more in the 24h of Le Mans.
Since drivers share cars and typically stay together for the season, usually you don't get 1 single driver champion, instead the 3 of them will share the prize. This occasionally isn't true as drivers in rare situations change cars during season, or have to be replaced for 1 race due to injury, other commitments, etc. Anyway even if there is a drivers championship, endurance racing is a lot more about "the team" than "the driver". This is kind of the opposite of F1 where the constructors championship is a forgotten footnote and all attention is on the star drivers. Here people will more readily say "Toyota won" than "Buemi and Davidson won" as it's all so much of a team effort.
Traditionally this type of racing was a lot more about reliability than actual speed, as reaching the end of the (long) race was already a feat and drivers drove at 90% to save the car; but in recent years with the increased reliability and fiercer competition, cars are now driven pretty much at the limit all race long. However, the ability to keep the car running without problems for a long time is still obviously hugely important.
Cars are also arguably technologically more advanced than F1 with the rules being more open to more development in more areas, you will have 4 manufacturers fighting for the LMP1 and overall titles this year (Audi, Toyota, Porsche, Nissan), however even the LMP1 cars are still slower than F1, mostly due to the rules mandating more weight.
The big race of the 24h of Le Mans brings additional challenges, beyond the length that is 3 times as long and needs sheer endurance from everyone involved. Since it's 24h long they get to drive through the day and night, a particularly difficult time is in the morning as the sun rising hurts visibility, and everybody is mega tired already at that stage. There are often accidents at that point of the race.
Edited by noikeee, 19 January 2015 - 16:54.
