The World Endurance Championship could reach new heights if it was not for a calendar that revolves mostly around the Le Mans 24 Hours, claims GARY WATKINS
The Nurburgring undoubtedly has a place on the World Endurance Championship calendar for historic reasons alone. The 'Ring was part of the old world sportscar series through nearly all of its 40-year existence, but the congratulatory mood among the WEC bosses on the announcement of an August 30 date for the German track next year was surely misplaced.
Sure, it reduced the ridiculous three-month gap between the two legs of the championship that has blighted this year's series after Interlagos was put back from late August to the end of the season. But WEC boss Gerard Neveu and series promoter the Automobile Club de l'Ouest needed to go further.
A gap of three months, two months or perhaps even one month after the most important race on the calendar at Le Mans is too long. The WEC needs to build on the momentum of the 24 Hours rather than letting it ebb away over a lengthy summer break.
Yannick Dalmas and Keke Rosberg's Peugeot during the Nurburgring's 1991 World Sportscar Championship round © LAT |
Neveu wants to fill that hole in the future, and it is very much his desire to expand on the current eight races once he can get the teams to agree. But how long are we going to have to wait?
Some teams and manufacturers like a nice summer break - wouldn't we all? - to allow them to recover from the excesses of Le Mans and do a spot of testing. But that's no good for the profile of a championship that still has a long way to go before it emerges from the shadows of its blue-riband event at its core.
A break didn't appear to be required back in the 1980s when I started reading about sportscar racing. More often than not there was a world championship race in July, coincidentally at the Nurburgring in 1984.
Nor should we forget that American open-wheel racing traditionally has an event the week after the Indy 500. Milwaukee used to follow on from the series' most important race of the year even in the days when the CART circus decamped to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway for a month, and on the current IndyCar schedule Detroit fills that spot.
Maybe they understand in the US that you need to strike while the iron is hot and build on the spike in interest around their centre-piece event. Conversely, the post-Le Mans break in the WEC only serves to highlight the distinction between the 24 Hours and the rest of the championship.
The WEC needs to be much more than a series of races around Le Mans. The world titles should have a prestige of their own that approaches the value of a victory at the 24 Hours. Manufacturers and sponsors require silverware to parade in the boardroom, and not everyone can win Le Mans. Which is why the WEC needs to be much more than a consolation prize for those who missed out on success in France.
WEC must build on Le Mans momentum © LAT |
For that reason the WEC should hit home with a race in July - no more than four weeks after Le Mans - when everyone is still talking about the most famous motor race in the world. Only then will the world championship begin to approach the status of its forebears.
Back in the day, the world sportscar championship really was much more than a collection of races before and after Le Mans. One former winner told me that he regarded the 24 Hours "as just another round of the championship". Such a comment sounds bizarre today, especially when you consider it came from the mouth of a man won Le Mans long before there was a drivers' title on offer in the world sportscar championship.
This debate becomes irrelevant if the WEC eventually opts for the so-called winter series. Should the series start in the autumn and climax at Le Mans, the endless summer break transforms into the off season.
The plan has been shelved for the moment courtesy of the difficulties transitioning into a season that runs contrary to existing motorsport culture. Even so, there seems to be a lot of support for the winter series in the paddock, but I'm increasingly unconvinced. And my reasoning is based on the arguments above.
Having Le Mans as the finale would, I believe, only hold back development of the championship by increasing the focus on the 24 Hours. It would just be too confusing for everyone.
Jaguar won both Le Mans and the WSC title in 1988, albeit with different cars © LAT |
Who would we be talking about on Monday morning after Le Mans? The new world champions? I don't think so, unless they happened to be the same drivers/team/manufacturer that won the 24 Hours.
Marketing-wise it would be a disaster. How could a manufacturer buy press ads in the following day's newspapers trumpeting its world championship success if it had failed to win Le Mans?
Le Mans skews the picture of the whole WEC, from a prestige point of view and in terms of the competition. Quite rightly, the winners of the big race get double points, but that can have a negative effect on the championship.
It certainly did last year. Allan McNish, Tom Kristensen and Loic Duval left Le Mans with a 30-point advantage over their Audi team-mates, which was always going to be difficult to close. There was a not dissimilar situation in LMP2 this year (though how a driver who finishes 12th in class can come away with a maximum 50 WEC points is another another debate entirely).
My answer is for the WEC to climax with a race with extra points, not double like Le Mans but maybe points and a half for a longer event.
Those additional points need to be earned and not handed out in some Formula 1-style gimmick. The idea has already worked in the Blancpain Endurance Series, though I'm not sure that the ACO would be too happy about borrowing an idea from Stephane Ratel even if he is still on their Christmas card list (he receives a tie each year).
I like the idea of a race lasting eight, nine (remember the Kyalami 9 Hours?), 10 or 12 hours as a way of finishing off the season. Neveu suggested, when I put this idea to him, that it would be foolhardy to try to magic a longer event out of one of the existing rounds. He's absolutely right when he says such a fixture would need to be an event and not just a normal race with a few extra hours tagged on.
Interlagos concluded the LMS season when Peugeot won it in 2007 |
Petit Le Mans at Road Atlanta, we can assume, will not be available any time soon, and its October date would make it too early anyway. But there is a fixture with a rich sportscar history that might just do the job.
You have probably forgotten that Peugeot belatedly sealed the 2007 Le Mans Series when the championship visited Brazil for the Mil Milhas. The 1000-mile event at Interlagos dates back to 1956 and was the brainchild of the late Wilson Fittipaldi Sr, father of the current promoter of the Brazilian WEC round, one Emerson Fittipaldi. So there's a nice link there.
The Mil Milhas is a lapsed fixture these days and subject to a legal wrangle involving the group that ran the last race in 2008 and the previous promoter, Antonio Hermann (who would be a willing ally for the ACO given his aspirations to take his Blancpain Sprint Series team to Le Mans). Whatever, it must be ripe for revival, and with Neveu saying that Interlagos could be back on the calendar in 2016, the Mil Milhas would create the kind of finale the WEC needs.
So I think you are beginning to get the gist of my dream WEC calendar. We'd have a race a month, and sometimes two, from April through November, no massive summer recess, no stupid schedule of five races in 11 weeks and an end-of-season extravaganza with big points on offer.
My plan isn't the silver bullet that will make WEC champions household names. But I believe it will give the series a fighting chance of reaching the heights it deserves and aspires to.
The World Endurance Championship could reach new heights if it was not for a calendar that revolves mostly around the Le Mans 24 Hours, claims GARY WATKINS
The Nurburgring undoubtedly has a place on the World Endurance Championship calendar for historic reasons alone. The 'Ring was part of the old world sportscar series through nearly all of its 40-year existence, but the congratulatory mood among the WEC bosses on the announcement of an August 30 date for the German track next year was surely misplaced.
Sure, it reduced the ridiculous three-month gap between the two legs of the championship that has blighted this year's series after Interlagos was put back from late August to the end of the season. But WEC boss Gerard Neveu and series promoter the Automobile Club de l'Ouest needed to go further.
A gap of three months, two months or perhaps even one month after the most important race on the calendar at Le Mans is too long. The WEC needs to build on the momentum of the 24 Hours rather than letting it ebb away over a lengthy summer break.
Yannick Dalmas and Keke Rosberg's Peugeot during the Nurburgring's 1991 World Sportscar Championship round © LAT |
Neveu wants to fill that hole in the future, and it is very much his desire to expand on the current eight races once he can get the teams to agree. But how long are we going to have to wait?
Some teams and manufacturers like a nice summer break - wouldn't we all? - to allow them to recover from the excesses of Le Mans and do a spot of testing. But that's no good for the profile of a championship that still has a long way to go before it emerges from the shadows of its blue-riband event at its core.
A break didn't appear to be required back in the 1980s when I started reading about sportscar racing. More often than not there was a world championship race in July, coincidentally at the Nurburgring in 1984.
Nor should we forget that American open-wheel racing traditionally has an event the week after the Indy 500. Milwaukee used to follow on from the series' most important race of the year even in the days when the CART circus decamped to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway for a month, and on the current IndyCar schedule Detroit fills that spot.
Maybe they understand in the US that you need to strike while the iron is hot and build on the spike in interest around their centre-piece event. Conversely, the post-Le Mans break in the WEC only serves to highlight the distinction between the 24 Hours and the rest of the championship.
The WEC needs to be much more than a series of races around Le Mans. The world titles should have a prestige of their own that approaches the value of a victory at the 24 Hours. Manufacturers and sponsors require silverware to parade in the boardroom, and not everyone can win Le Mans. Which is why the WEC needs to be much more than a consolation prize for those who missed out on success in France.
WEC must build on Le Mans momentum © LAT |
For that reason the WEC should hit home with a race in July - no more than four weeks after Le Mans - when everyone is still talking about the most famous motor race in the world. Only then will the world championship begin to approach the status of its forebears.
Back in the day, the world sportscar championship really was much more than a collection of races before and after Le Mans. One former winner told me that he regarded the 24 Hours "as just another round of the championship". Such a comment sounds bizarre today, especially when you consider it came from the mouth of a man won Le Mans long before there was a drivers' title on offer in the world sportscar championship.
This debate becomes irrelevant if the WEC eventually opts for the so-called winter series. Should the series start in the autumn and climax at Le Mans, the endless summer break transforms into the off season.
The plan has been shelved for the moment courtesy of the difficulties transitioning into a season that runs contrary to existing motorsport culture. Even so, there seems to be a lot of support for the winter series in the paddock, but I'm increasingly unconvinced. And my reasoning is based on the arguments above.
Having Le Mans as the finale would, I believe, only hold back development of the championship by increasing the focus on the 24 Hours. It would just be too confusing for everyone.
Jaguar won both Le Mans and the WSC title in 1988, albeit with different cars © LAT |
Who would we be talking about on Monday morning after Le Mans? The new world champions? I don't think so, unless they happened to be the same drivers/team/manufacturer that won the 24 Hours.
Marketing-wise it would be a disaster. How could a manufacturer buy press ads in the following day's newspapers trumpeting its world championship success if it had failed to win Le Mans?
Le Mans skews the picture of the whole WEC, from a prestige point of view and in terms of the competition. Quite rightly, the winners of the big race get double points, but that can have a negative effect on the championship.
It certainly did last year. Allan McNish, Tom Kristensen and Loic Duval left Le Mans with a 30-point advantage over their Audi team-mates, which was always going to be difficult to close. There was a not dissimilar situation in LMP2 this year (though how a driver who finishes 12th in class can come away with a maximum 50 WEC points is another another debate entirely).
My answer is for the WEC to climax with a race with extra points, not double like Le Mans but maybe points and a half for a longer event.
Those additional points need to be earned and not handed out in some Formula 1-style gimmick. The idea has already worked in the Blancpain Endurance Series, though I'm not sure that the ACO would be too happy about borrowing an idea from Stephane Ratel even if he is still on their Christmas card list (he receives a tie each year).
I like the idea of a race lasting eight, nine (remember the Kyalami 9 Hours?), 10 or 12 hours as a way of finishing off the season. Neveu suggested, when I put this idea to him, that it would be foolhardy to try to magic a longer event out of one of the existing rounds. He's absolutely right when he says such a fixture would need to be an event and not just a normal race with a few extra hours tagged on.
Interlagos concluded the LMS season when Peugeot won it in 2007 |
Petit Le Mans at Road Atlanta, we can assume, will not be available any time soon, and its October date would make it too early anyway. But there is a fixture with a rich sportscar history that might just do the job.
You have probably forgotten that Peugeot belatedly sealed the 2007 Le Mans Series when the championship visited Brazil for the Mil Milhas. The 1000-mile event at Interlagos dates back to 1956 and was the brainchild of the late Wilson Fittipaldi Sr, father of the current promoter of the Brazilian WEC round, one Emerson Fittipaldi. So there's a nice link there.
The Mil Milhas is a lapsed fixture these days and subject to a legal wrangle involving the group that ran the last race in 2008 and the previous promoter, Antonio Hermann (who would be a willing ally for the ACO given his aspirations to take his Blancpain Sprint Series team to Le Mans). Whatever, it must be ripe for revival, and with Neveu saying that Interlagos could be back on the calendar in 2016, the Mil Milhas would create the kind of finale the WEC needs.
So I think you are beginning to get the gist of my dream WEC calendar. We'd have a race a month, and sometimes two, from April through November, no massive summer recess, no stupid schedule of five races in 11 weeks and an end-of-season extravaganza with big points on offer.
My plan isn't the silver bullet that will make WEC champions household names. But I believe it will give the series a fighting chance of reaching the heights it deserves and aspires to.