The LMDh cars

Another forum ^ opinion? Gospel, I tell ya!

That's the "genie" the ACO and IMSA uncorked in 2006 when Audi showed up with a diesel and was the only factory team in LMP1 in the ALMS at the time (Peugeot were in the same seat in the LMS in 2007, also with a diesel). Then the ACO opened up a different can of worms with hybrids--again, another tech that only factory teams were able to exploit to a decent degree. They tried to various degree help out privateer teams with BOP, but even that often was little help against factory teams with their tech, money, resources, and their basically bespoke cars.

Back to Alpine, even if the ACO were like "you can fit a bigger fuel tank", they can't because the car can't really use one to begin with.

And you do also have to remember that even Glickenhaus is running at a rather portly 1030kg (minimum for actual LMH/LMDH cars), as that's what the ACO wanted (back when Aston Martin showed interest in the class with the thus far stillborn Valkyrie hypercar). Even though the AMR program died, the ACO lowered max desired engine power, but didn't lower the minimum wight in response. That's also why the Alpine is running at 950kg this year. For comparison to Glickenhaus, the Toyota is running at 1060+kg to balance it performance-wise vs Glickenhaus, which I believe are also allowed slightly more fuel capacity (at Monza Glickenhaus usually did a lap more per stint than Toyota did).

So far, however, Alpine are the only car to not have any apparent durability/reliability issues. There's been rumors of Toyota having braking issues possibly related to ERS/brake by wire performance. Neither should be new to Toyota, given that all of their previous LMP1 cars have been hybrids, and that the TS040 and -050 relied more on the hybrid for motive power, which meant that ERS and brake by wire was more important. However, the GR010 is much heavier than it's predecessors, and has a smaller ERS system that does less harvesting, and hence has less braking effect when counted by itself.

There's no denying that it does seem that the Toyota does have issues with consistency with braking performance, and possibly other minor glitches. Their only trouble free race has been Algarve. At Spa, one car lost time due to an off track excursion cause by a brake issue, and at Monza one car stalled briefly on track due to an electronic glitch, and the other had a fuel system issue (also had to have the left front suspension changed due to an improperly tightened wheel).

And even sans hybrid, Glickenhaus had issues at Monza, mostly with brakes that knocked one car out of contention for an overall podium. Of course, it can be argued that it was to due the car being so heavy on a track with tons of heavy braking (and no ERS to assist with braking), or it was a fluke problem with either brakes that were bad due to QC on the brake parts, or, like with the Toyota left front issue, an error on the part of fitting the parts to begin with.

Problem with making any definite analysis without the teams being clear on what happened, is that, one, the Toyota and Glickenhaus are still new cars, two, they were sort of rushed due to the ACO being late with finalizing full tech regs, and three, I do think that the LMH/LMDH cars being so much heavier and with reduced aero efficiency (namely reduced downforce due to reliance on one main aero package) has pushed everyone into unfamiliar territory. The increased weight will hopefully make the cars cheaper and simpler, but it has it's own knock-on effects, too. Namely, more weight/mass means more inertia--objects at rest want to remain at rest, and objects in motion want to stay in motion, and more weight and mass, more inertia.

This is where I think that the likes of Audi and Porsche, as well as Peugeot and Ferrari will have an advantage. Not just can they see what Toyota and Glickenhaus have done, but you also have to consider that in the case of Audi Sport and Porsche Motorsport (as well as ultimately likely Lamborghini) will have a pretty sorted car by 2023. Porsche are expected to be testing their Multimatic sourced car starting very late this year or early next year, Audi (who will be using the same basic chassis) probably won't be far behind, and they effectively will have almost a year to test, develop and homologate their cars, which is longer than Toyota and Glickenhaus got this go around. However, LMH/LMDH cars are allowed one major joker upgrade a season per a 5 yeear homogation cycle, and can even homologate a new car once per cycle (twice if you count the initial homolgation).

The Test Day for the 2021 24 Hours of Le Mans ended yesterday at 19:00. The session is always an opportunity to perfect race preparations and gather precious data.
The #708 Glickenhaus 007 LMH HYPERCAR clocked the fastest lap of the day – 03:29.115 thanks to Olivier Pla, visibly on form.


www.24h-lemans.com/en/news/24-hours-of-le-mans-how-was-test-day-55387

Audi drops plans for factory IMSA LMDh program

Audi’s highly anticipated return to prototype racing in 2023 within the new LMDh ranks has undergone a surprising development. RACER has learned the German manufacturer will not campaign factory entries in IMSA’s WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, electing to focus on a sole factory program in the FIA World Endurance Championship.

The change comes after the brand actively pursued a North American partner team to field LMDhs on its behalf. RACER understands conversations with those potential teams – at least one of which reached an advanced stage – were broken off by Audi after the decision was made to concentrate on the FIA WEC.
racer.com/2021/08/30/audi-drops-plans-for-factory-imsa-lmdh-program/?fbclid=IwAR1bNhLaLwuwIDcXBhYAQ9GYXNrY9vV4-wEJL9rYd_LTBWpBDYVf7S7njoU

It's weird that Audi would pursue two different race teams to run their respective effort. That has to be counterproductive.

If they went with one team running all the cars worldwide they could pool those resources when all those cars show up for Le Mans.