WEC Preview 2024: The Good, the Ugly, the Strange as Series Opens in Qatar

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The World Endurance Championship embarks on what promises to be an interesting season, starting with a 10-hour season opener in Qatar on Saturday.

Before the green ever drops at the Lusail International Circuit, the starting grid alone confirms happy days have dawned for a championship too often in search of manufacturers in the past and a world standing.

But nothing is perfect, least of all any racing series. Here’s the Good, the Bad, the Strange, Curious and Ugly when it comes to this year’s eight-race WEC season, including a U.S. round at the Circuit of Americas on Sept. 1.

One hopes it will be a lucky 13th season for the WEC.

The Good

Nineteen Hypercar and LMDh category cars have gathered in Qatar for the first round, an extraordinary number for a new prototype category launching its second year, especially given that they are cutting edge hybrids. And that Aston Martin will join next year.

Last year’s teams, including champions Toyota, Le Mans winner Ferrari and Daytona winner Porsche, face the new prototypes from Alpine, BMW, Isotta Fraschini and Lamborghini plus privateer Porsche and Ferrari entries.

To what do we owe this occasion of so many beautiful prototypes with their extended wheel bases? I’d give the credit to Pierre Fillon, the president of the Automobile Club de L’Ouest at Le Mans, and Jim France, the chairman of IMSA. The day these two agreed to a cost-capped convergence of platform hybrids in IMSA and ground-up Hypercar prototypes in the WEC was the day endurance racing’s future changed for the better.

These two gentlemen have lived through the previous iterations of the self-destructive mutual isolation between Europe and the U.S. and apparently learned something. What about the FIA? It was always the fly in the pie, bent on promoting F1 at the expense of sports cars. Fortunately, the WEC is effectively a step-child of Le Mans.

For those doubting if the universal platform IMSA cars would ever get a fair shake against the Hypercars under the Balance of Performance at the WEC, the Prologue test days and the first rounds of free practice indicated the Porsche Penske Motorsport Porsche 963 as well as privateer entries will be in the hunt.

Matt Campbell claimed the pole with a flyer at the finish during this year’s special 10-minute qualifying session. It was the first pole for an LMDh entry. The privateer Jota Porsche took third on the grid behind the runner-up Toyotoa GR010 HYBRID of Nick de Vries.

“Our work during the past season and over the winter is obviously yielding the results we had hoped for,” said Urs Kuratle, director of the LMDh program for Porsche. “The triumph in Daytona underlined some very important things for us,” he continued. “The team worked perfectly from an operational standpoint, and the Porsche 963 was fast and reliable over the 24 hours.”

The Cadillac V-Series.R of Chip Ganassi Racing, qualified by Alex Lynn, will start seventh.

The influx of new drivers to the WEC is another positive sign. There are 26 rookies coming into the series full time, including Mick Schumacher with Alpine, and, at Le Mans, Alex Palou, who will drive a Cadillac for Chip Ganassi Racing in the French epic.

In LMGT3, which accounts for the bulk of the series newcomers, MotoGP champ Valentino Rossi will segue from two wheels to four in a BMW M4 GT3 with WRT. Spaniard Daniel Juncadella, a regular in IMSA, will drive a Corvette Z06 GT3.R for TF Sport.