These are the new Le Mans cars you could soon be seeing on the street

The World Endurance Championship and its flagship race, Le Mans, is entering a new era: the return of hypercars

After the glorious “Super Season”, the beginning of the end of an era in the WEC or World Endurance Championship has arrived. As happened a couple of decades ago, the radical change in the regulations will allow the entry of competition vehicles derived from cars homologated for road use.

But far from being a replica of the GTE Pro and GTE Am categories, where road sports cars undergo extreme reworking until they become racing cars, the new WEC category, known as the hypercar class, will allow from the 2020/21 season entries at the highest level from large-scale manufacturers as well as from almost artisanal builders, provided that the cars they wish to race have had a minimum production of 20 units registered for use on ordinary roads.

https://youtu.be/iMJytS2DvrM

This new class will even allow prototypes that could never be driven on open public roads to line up on the same grid, at least until that grid acquires a significant number of hypercars competing at the highest level, with cars coming off the same production line as their dealership siblings, making a championship more appealing to the general public, one which in this last season has only featured Toyota among the manufacturers in LMP1 Hybrid.

Since the publication of the upcoming regulations, meetings and negotiations with interested brands have produced a flow of information and rumours about which manufacturers could enter the future World Endurance Championship in the autumn of 2020.

With the extensive WEC season concluded and, from the next one, what will rightly be the cherry on top, the ultimate endurance race, the race of races, the 24 Hours of Le Mans, announcements about manufacturers joining the list of car makers for the World Endurance Championship confirm what was already known or, in some cases, taken for granted.

Toyota GR Super Sport prototype

As we indicated, after the departure of the LMP1 category of Porsche and, earlier, Audi, only the Japanese brand remained among the contenders for the manufacturers’ and drivers’ titles as the representative of road car makers.

Since 2018 it was announced that Toyota would continue its support and participation in the World Endurance Championship beyond this season, and that it would do so by developing a supercar.

This weekend, from the surroundings of the Sarthe circuit, Toyota shed more light on its reference vehicle, the Toyota GR Super Sport.

The definitive name of the Toyota GR Super Sport for the WEC, as well as the technical specifications of this car and the production car, are still pending further details.

A car that will be developed by the competition department, Toyota Gazoo Racing, also responsible for road cars such as the brand-new Toyota GR Supra featured in the test we published, will have development bases at its facilities in Japan and Germany.

The production Toyota GR Super Sport will be the basis of the racing car, a car that will feature a hybrid powertrain, possibly based on the current Toyota TS050 Hybrid, which has a setup with a petrol V6 engine as its main element, supported by an electric system.

Aston Martin Valkyrie AMR Pro

The teasers that Aston Martin has released over the last year about its new road hypercar, the Aston Martin Valkyrie, have included its intention to take part in the future WEC championship.

This weekend, against the inspiring backdrop of the 60th anniversary of the brand’s Le Mans victory, they placed the 2021 race as the priority goal in top-level racing.

https://twitter.com/astonmartin/status/1139462575396139008

To do so, they will field at least two units of the Aston Martin Valkyrie AMR Pro. A car born from the combination of the greatest expression of aerodynamics and mechanical potential that is the Aston Martin Valkyrie.

Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus SCG 007

Or rather, the Glickenhaus Racing SCG 007 is the first manufacturer to make its participation in the new WEC official from the 2020/21 season, with the goal of “fighting for the dream of being the first American manufacturer to win at Le Mans since the last Ford win in 1967″.

This news did not surprise those who have seen in recent years how the company of billionaire James Cameron has put some of the earlier SCG units on the asphalt of the Green Hell to compete in the other of the most thrilling 24-hour endurance races we fans face every year.

After its road-derived cars competed in the 24 Hours of Nürburgring and some rounds of the circuit’s own championship, the VLN, the jump to the World Endurance Championship will be made with the SCG007 in its adapted form.

The SCG 007 shown in digital images strongly recalls another icon among track-derived hypercars, the Ferrari FXX. That is no surprise given Cameron’s own car collection, where we find the only Ferrari P4/5 built on the Enzo chassis.

ByColles Racing Hypercar

We know little or nothing about the ByColles hypercar except that it is under construction. This is the information provided by Colin Kolles’ team, which announced that it will not take part in the WEC during the 2019/20 season, in order to focus on developing its own car that will allow it to compete in the World Championship’s hypercar class.

We cannot deny that this is the car that raises the most doubts, given that nothing confirms its production and given the track record of the team or teams where the Colles family has run cars, or how those they have managed have been run.

Be that as it may, ByColles’ current goal is to put a hypercar on the track and on the road, a challenge we will see whether it materialises.

Which other manufacturers could enter the WEC from 2020?

Officially, the ones mentioned above, but during the negotiation of the regulations, the manufacturers involved at the time have been taken into account. This means that they have either been able to offer opinions or listen to the work line that will allow hypercars to be put on the pavement of the street or the circuit.

Among those brands that may have taken part in the meetings are BMW, Ford, Porsche, Ferrari, McLaren…

The first two have already announced that they will not take part in this new category; in fact, this 2019 edition of the 24 Hours of Le Mans has been the official farewell of both manufacturers from the World Endurance Championship.

For its part, Porsche is part of Le Mans history, something well known, and it is also no secret that the brand has acknowledged its engineers are studying the feasibility of adapting to the 2020/21 WEC regulations.

Beyond that, guessing what car they might enter is an enigma. In fact, together with rumours that Porsche is already working on the successor to the Porsche 918 Spyder and knowing that they have evolved the hybrid technology of the Porsche 919 Hybrid, the manufacturer’s efforts not to drift away from the World Endurance Championship could give fans greater reasons to keep their interest in endurance racing alive.

The Woking-based team has also been in the conversations. Its commitment to road hypercars places McLaren at the epicentre of the rumour mill around the WEC. Especially when Zak Brown, CEO of McLaren Racing and formerly of the McLaren Technology Group, has his United Sports structure competing in this championship and in the American IMSA series.

As could not be otherwise, Ferrari and racing, Ferrari and the World Endurance Championship, Ferrari and Le Mans. A story of love and heartache that remains in a state of divorce to date.

That the Maranello team is not present in what is now the WEC, which has existed since 1971, is only anecdotal, since it has competed through tuning firms even linked to the brand, such as AF Corse. This means that the name Ferrari has not appeared in the list of participating manufacturers for decades, something that may be close to coming to an end if a new Ferrari hypercar, beyond the Ferrari P80C, puts its wheels on the circuits of the WEC 2020/21 calendar.