“Formula E is currently planned as an additional project and our decision making for next year is completely separated from that,” he explained. “Work has already started on the 2018 LMP1 concept.
These were Dr Wolfgang’s words to Autosport’s Gary Watkins earlier this year. Since then, Audi shocked the motor sport world by not only dumping their WEC agenda, but also dumping their WRC campaign in favour of funnelling their motorsport resources into a fully-fledged Formula E project. This is a move that dropping WEC alone will save Audi about $300 million in expenses and 20 per cent will be enough to be at the Paris end of Formula E against the likes of Renault e.Dams and DS Virgin.
Speaking to 300 employees of the motorsport department on Wednesday morning, Chairman of the Board of Management Rupert Stadler put his strategic decision in the context of the current burdens on the brand, pointing out that it was important to focus on the things that would keep Audi competitive in the years ahead.
That is why the Board of Management had decided to terminate Audi’s commitment in endurance racing. In the future, Audi will be using the know-how and skills of the motorsport experts from Neuburg and Neckarsulm partially in motorsport and partially in production development.
“We’re going to contest the race for the future on electric power,” says Stadler. “As our production cars are becoming increasingly electric, our motorsport cars, as Audi’s technological spearheads, have to even more so.”
The first all-electric racing series perfectly matches the strategy of offering fully battery-electric models year by year starting in 2018, Audi currently being in the greatest transformation stage in the company’s history.
The commitment in FIA Formula E will already commence in 2017. It is regarded as the racing series with the greatest potential for the future. That is why Audi has intensified the existing partnership with Team ABT Schaeffler Audi Sport in the current 2016-17 season. On the road toward a full factory commitment, the manufacturer is now actively joining the technical development.
Audi has built its sports car brand on TDI technology and in the wake of ‘Dieselgate’ ommissions scandal, found themselves with millions in fines and left with a rather unpalatable motorsport marketing programme that spent millions simply to defeat another in-house brand in Porsche.
In addition, AFAIK Audi could also cut costs renting out Sauber’s Hinwil aero tunnel (Toyota have always utilised their own facility) given Formula E currently runs a spec-aero package.
But what does this mean for the WEC given that now Porsche and Toyota will be left to fight out the LMP1 category, with a grossly unreliable ByKolles now the only LMP1 privateer following Rebellion’s recent decision to switch to an LMP2 Oreca in 2017.
Gérard Neveu, CEO of the WEC offered calming words in the wake of Audi’s announcement, simply saying that “one manufacturer is leaving, others will soon be arriving. This is the life of a championship”, while Pierre Fillon, President of the Automobile Club de l’Ouest offered a boiler plate: “one door closes and, at the same time, another one opens with the already-announced arrival of other manufacturers”.
BMW might have signed on for an extensive GT programme, but having the categories hopes resting on a premier LMP1 class of two manufacturers is a precarious situation and only works on the guarantee that both will be competitive – something of a fallacy in motor sport. So in the backwash of Audi setting sail, have the ACO and the WEC been visiting Peugeot for tea and coffee?
Peugeot has not completely ruled out a return to factory LMP1 competition in the future, however Peugeot Sport director Bruno Famin cited the spiralling costs of LMP1 ruled out the French manufacturer committing to a WEC programme.
“The budget is [he problem,” Famin told Endurance-Info. “The President of PSA dreams of a return of Peugeot to the 24 Hours of Le Mans and more generally, in endurance racing. But for this there are conditions… That PSA gets better, which is pretty much engaged and that the requested budget is sharply down. Currently it’s just an idea and a target on the horizon.”
Toyota have been vocal in their push for cost cuts, with Vasselon admits cost-capping may be higher on his own team’s agenda, he believes doing so is in the interests of the entire category.
“We are favouring this, because it’s our strategy to ask for it”, Toyota Technical Director Pascal Vasselon told eRacing in December last year. “We need it and the series needs it. We have to be careful, because we are very close to entering an ‘Formula One crisis’. We feel our position is fragile and then you are left with two manufacturers from the same group – this is fragile as well. What we have proposed is to cap some spending so that it’s not so easy to buy performance.”
“We can’t buy performance we can just do the strict minimum to be there. We were doing thirty test day and they (the opposition) were doing eighty, which is just ridiculous. Between Le Mans and Austin last year, we did two test days and Porsche did nine. This you cannot fight because these people aren’t stupid. They are experienced and have money. If they test three or four more times than you, you cannot win, so we have implemented this testing limitation. We have implemented a wind tunnel limitation after learning Audi were using twice as much wind tunnel time than us. The regulation comes in next year at 1,200 hours.”
The caps may have come too late, but with the WEC exploring technology that is arguably superior to Formula One and more in line with road-going commercial activity, the costs are somewhat obligatory.
If WEC’s North American cousins, IMSA is anything to go by, could we see a consolidation of LMP1 and LMP2 into a single class in the future, but given the recent curbs to LMP2 expenditure, this would be seen as a foolhardy move.
Likewise, it would be virtually impossible to make LMP1 a customer team again (the last being a Peugeot 908 HDi run by Pescarolo Sport in 2009) given the level of technology required to operate a prototype in the premier class – Team Joest being the only team capable of picking up the reigns with we are to believe that a 2018-spec R18 has been conceived, let alone built.
Then of course are the now currently available drivers that were on Audi’s books. Will so much talent on offer (as has always been the case in WEC) a review of the third-car option could reappear on the table a move that has certainly been favoured by Toyota in recent weeks.
For the WEC, there will be much soul-searching, reflection and bargaining to be had over the coming months.
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