WEC 2025

[dialtone]

Here we go again with another year of this incredible competition. And next year we get hyundai and lambo.

First round and great hyperpole, interesting to see porsche not in it and only 1 toyota. Cadillac and BMW look really strong.

[Fred]

Is Lamborghini confirmed to be back next year? I thought it was more something they’d like to do but they didn’t have the team/funding etc to do?

[dialtone]

Is Lamborghini confirmed to be back next year? I thought it was more something they’d like to do but they didn’t have the team/funding etc to do?

They have been confusing I admit. I think they are looking for customer teams for Lmdh.

[SealTheRealDeal]

Cadillac needs to perform an exorcism on its cars.

[dialtone]

What happened to Toyota? Their end of stint pace seemed to have dropped off vertically but they didn't change tires.

[dialtone]

Without the 10s speeding penalty for #51 Ferrari would/could be 1-2-3, not a bad start of the year, makes me worried about the BoP incoming for them.

[F1ern]

Very dominant Ferrari performance.

[Fred]

Without the 10s speeding penalty for #51 Ferrari would/could be 1-2-3, not a bad start of the year, makes me worried about the BoP incoming for them.

The BoP they received here was idiotic. They were a somewhat comfortable 2nd at Qatar last year and brought in some upgrades to the 499P that improved performance this year. Yet they got a huge BoP break, it didn’t make any sense. It’s no surprise that they dominated.

Porsche got slammed with the BoP a little bit too much, but with their pace last year it at least makes sense. I have no clue what they were thinking with Ferrari’s BoP this year though, it just handed them the win. Their BoP should be getting slammed in upcoming races and I’d be annoyed if it isn’t.

[Tvetovnato]

Agree with above. When I saw the BoP last week, I was 100 % what the pace order would be. You don’t need an engineering degree to realize that slapping 30 kgs more on the Porsche, which already was not the quickest car last year even though it won, would put them nowhere on a track with this many medium and high speed corners. They are basically getting punished now for executing perfect races and not for a pace advantage, which is ridiculous. In IMSA the Caddy is very similarily BOPed to the Porsche, so I have no idea how they can come to this conclusion here.

It’s also still painfully obvious that the LMH have some sort of inherent advantage to the LMDh that they can’t figure out yet.

Good race between the Ferraris though.

[dialtone]

Without the 10s speeding penalty for #51 Ferrari would/could be 1-2-3, not a bad start of the year, makes me worried about the BoP incoming for them.

The BoP they received here was idiotic. They were a somewhat comfortable 2nd at Qatar last year and brought in some upgrades to the 499P that improved performance this year. Yet they got a huge BoP break, it didn’t make any sense. It’s no surprise that they dominated.

Porsche got slammed with the BoP a little bit too much, but with their pace last year it at least makes sense. I have no clue what they were thinking with Ferrari’s BoP this year though, it just handed them the win. Their BoP should be getting slammed in upcoming races and I’d be annoyed if it isn’t.

I think that's a bit exaggerated, they certainly were favored in the BoP but after over 4h of green flag they finished the race 10s ahead of the 4th, not 1 lap. Favorable BoP but it was more tire life that favored Ferrari rather than other performance metrics. And the cadillacs taking each other out while being 1-2.

They will do minimal adjustment because this race showed they are quite close imho, within 5-10kg will be the adjustment.

[dialtone]

Agree with above. When I saw the BoP last week, I was 100 % what the pace order would be. You don’t need an engineering degree to realize that slapping 30 kgs more on the Porsche, which already was not the quickest car last year even though it won, would put them nowhere on a track with this many medium and high speed corners. They are basically getting punished now for executing perfect races and not for a pace advantage, which is ridiculous. In IMSA the Caddy is very similarily BOPed to the Porsche, so I have no idea how they can come to this conclusion here.

It’s also still painfully obvious that the LMH have some sort of inherent advantage to the LMDh that they can’t figure out yet.

Good race between the Ferraris though.

How was Porsche not the fastest car last year when they absolutely dominated the race? They gave 1 lap to the 4th placed #83 Ferrari so everyone else was slower than that. Last year's Porsche was a much worse favorable BoP than this year's Ferrari.

[Tvetovnato]

Agree with above. When I saw the BoP last week, I was 100 % what the pace order would be. You don’t need an engineering degree to realize that slapping 30 kgs more on the Porsche, which already was not the quickest car last year even though it won, would put them nowhere on a track with this many medium and high speed corners. They are basically getting punished now for executing perfect races and not for a pace advantage, which is ridiculous. In IMSA the Caddy is very similarily BOPed to the Porsche, so I have no idea how they can come to this conclusion here.

It’s also still painfully obvious that the LMH have some sort of inherent advantage to the LMDh that they can’t figure out yet.

Good race between the Ferraris though.

How was Porsche not the fastest car last year when they absolutely dominated the race? They gave 1 lap to the 4th placed #83 Ferrari so everyone else was slower than that. Last year's Porsche was a much worse favorable BoP than this year's Ferrari.

I mean on average during the season. The Porsche advantage in this specific race last year came only from nailing the tyre management which all other teams failed to do basically. There is an article about it on sportscar365. All the teams learned lessons during the rest of the year, including how to get the best out of the tyres for their cars, and learned heaps of what went wrong in this race last year. So to think that 30 kgs more on the Porsche would be fair here is nonsensical.

It was the same with the Acura in Rolex 24 last year, where they got an insane weight increase that you just knew would put them out of contention, which also happened.

[dialtone]

I mean on average during the season. The Porsche advantage in this specific race last year came only from nailing the tyre management which all other teams failed to do basically. There is an article about it on sportscar365. All the teams learned lessons during the rest of the year, including how to get the best out of the tyres for their cars, and learned heaps of what went wrong in this race last year. So to think that 30 kgs more on the Porsche would be fair here is nonsensical.

It was the same with the Acura in Rolex 24 last year, where they got an insane weight increase that you just knew would put them out of contention, which also happened.

Yes and they've done it to Ferrari after Lemans last year where they gave it 17kg more for Sao Paulo and finished the race 5th and 6th over 1 minute behind.

They do this, it happens to all.

[Fred]

I mean on average during the season. The Porsche advantage in this specific race last year came only from nailing the tyre management which all other teams failed to do basically. There is an article about it on sportscar365. All the teams learned lessons during the rest of the year, including how to get the best out of the tyres for their cars, and learned heaps of what went wrong in this race last year. So to think that 30 kgs more on the Porsche would be fair here is nonsensical.

It was the same with the Acura in Rolex 24 last year, where they got an insane weight increase that you just knew would put them out of contention, which also happened.

Yes and they've done it to Ferrari after Lemans last year where they gave it 17kg more for Sao Paulo and finished the race 5th and 6th over 1 minute behind.

They do this, it happens to all.

Which, for me at least, is fine. However, I don’t think teams should be given huge BoP boosts that effectively gift them the win. It’s happened for Ferrari a few times (Le Mans ‘23 & ‘24, Imola ‘24, Spa ‘24, and now Qatar ‘25), but the only other manufacturer since everyone joined in ‘23 (SCG and Alpine got some boosts prior) to get this treatment was Porsche at Qatar ‘24. If Ferrari did throw away these gifts they’d have dominated last year in the standings and this season is appearing to be worse still.

You mention Cadillac, but they weren’t that close on race pace. They got lucky with the safety car and as a result could’ve caused Ferrari some headaches in the middle of the race until they got past, but that’s it. Ferrari just kept easily building a 10s lead in a couple of laps and than maintained that gap, just look at how the #51 came through the field after being at the back midway through. Yes, they had some luck coming through, but you could easily see they had a noticeable pace advantage on everyone as they did so.

I don’t fully agree with the other person regarding Porsche though, Porsche’s BoP was harsh, but the fact that they could somewhat comfortably run in the midfield shows that they weren’t wrong to be BoPed massively. I say this as a Porsche fan. Arguably the same for Toyota too who were just a bit slower than BMW, Alpine, and Cadillac. Ferrari though, they were leagues ahead and need to be reeled in. I don’t know who looked at Ferrari’s pace at any race last year and thought, “damn, they need to drop another 20kg”, especially after all their performance upgrades.

The BoP we ended last year on was close to perfect. The top 3 could’ve been reigned in a bit, but you saw the top 3 fighting for wins and the rest (except Lamborghini) fighting for podiums. They just needed to take that, bring down the top 3 a little, and then tweak it for each track. Instead, they gave Ferrari a huge boost and gifted them this win. I trust that they’ll fix it for the next race, but this is a huge mistake that shouldn’t have happened in the first place. The fact that it keeps happening for Ferrari and they try to throw it away each time really dampens all of their success in the HY class.

[dialtone]

Nobody gifts lemans. Toyota spent the whole early 2024 season hiding their true performance to have better bop at lemans, only for them to throw it away again, like the year prior.

Toyota was the faster car both years at lemans.