Endurance Season 2020 and Beyond

[CudaMan]

My first thought was Stroll. Sad news indeed. Any word on the Valkyrie road car? Hopefully it isn't stillborn.

[Rare White Ape]

Man that’s disappointing.

For now, here’s a statement from the ACO:

[blah blah we hope they can resolve the situation]

Followed by:

In the meantime, the strategy concerning Le Mans Hypercar and LMDh remains unchanged. The next phase in the positive development of the future top class of competition for the WEC (and IMSA) will be revealed during the SuperSebring event in Florida between 18-21 March.

From here: https://www.lemans.org/en/news/statement-in-response-to-aston-martin-release-on-valkyrie-race-programme/53423

[The359]

The change comes in the wake of Aston’s re-entry into Formula 1 next year, through Stroll’s Racing Point F1 team, which will become a fully-fledged factory outfit and is expected to utilize the majority of the manufacturer’s motorsports budget.

The release noted Aston Martin’s future motorsport plans “will be defined” by its F1 and endurance racing programs moving forward.

So, Stroll. He's shifting money to salvage his own F1 team by making Aston Martin pay for it.

And just to keep some of us clinging to hope, the official announcement is "on hold" and not "cancelled." Which has to be taken with a major grain of salt.

[The359]

I think this is Stroll trying to deflect from Aston Martin's failure to produce a car.

The reason for this decision is that the brand feels that the landscape in the top level of sportscars has changed since it announced it would enter the FIA WEC’s hypercar ranks in June last year. The announcement by the ACO and IMSA to harmonise the Hypercar class with the LMDh prototype category in the WEC from 2021 and the US-based WeatherTech Sportscar Championship from 2022 has prompted Aston Martin to step away.

Having more competition is somehow a bad thing? They were the ones who wanted Hypercar modified to suit them.

[Rare White Ape]

Meanwhile in YouTube land (uploaded less than a day ago)

[The359]

First real response from Aston Martin since the announcement:

“It’s very disappointing for us for you for everybody involved,” he explained. “But we’re not making excuses or not blaming anybody that just some facts have changed. We made a genuine commitment last year to to bring Valkyrie to the FIA WEC. That’s a big thing for any company to commit to a major motorsport programme like that. It’s a big investment. There’s always an element of risk in it. And of course, we had to get a board approval for that last year.”

“That board approval was based on an assumption that more sportscar brands would come into hypercar, and the class would flourish, not maybe not in year one, but in year two, and we’d see a golden era of top-end sportscar racing.

“We think that the market for customer race cars is for us is damaged by that (convergence) because every other racing Valkyrie is an expensive car because it comes from a road car which costs two and a half million pounds. Now private teams will be able to, based on what we think other competitors to do, are going to do will be able to buy premium branded LMDh cars that are much cheaper to buy and cheaper to run.”

“We need some time to evaluate it,” he said. “(Convergence) It changes the conditions on which we got the project approved. So we have to take a pause and decide whether we should carry on with that or look at LMDh or look at staying in GTs. This is nothing to do with Lawrence Stroll coming in, nothing to do with the fact that we’ve had a tougher than expected financial year. It’s as straight as I can be.”

“(Aston Martin is) a long way advanced with the car, it would have had to have run within the next couple of months to make the start of the season,” he said. “We were about to build a car.”

Emphasis mine. So the program is merely paused, but the reasoning is that they are unhappy with the LMDh cars. Which makes sense, Aston Martin were the very ones who argued that the LMH rules should allow production-based cars just so that they could run the Valkyrie. But I'm not sure I understand their argument that this will detract from customer cars. The long standing rumor has been that Aston Martin would have 4 Valkyries in the WEC, two for the factory team and two for R-Motorsport. Further, I don't think I see a lot of Europeans jumping on the LMDh side of things. Peugeot might just to save some money, but who is going to buy a Cadillac, Acura, or Mazda from the US? Mazda is struggling to get their own car reliable and it's on the worst LMP2 chassis. Honda/Acura has shown no sign of a dream of returning to Le Mans, and the Cadillac might be a popular choice but is GM going to be able to supply more teams than they already do in the US? Toyota is certainly sticking with Hypercar. And with all the money they have already invested, how much more money would it cost to actually finish the thing?

I can't tell if Aston Martin is deflecting from a car that possibly is way behind schedule and may not work, or if they are using this as a bargaining tactic to try and keep them ahead of the LMDh potential.

[Godson]

I kinda think it's both

[The359]

If they are worried about cost, why would they even mention "well we have to wait until Sebring and see if we want to build an LMDh car." That'd be money down the drain.

[Kchrpm]

Aston Martin is struggling for money, and Red Bull is developing the car. Red Bull is now their F1 competitor, Stroll cares more about F1 than endurance racing because of his son, and the road cars don't need the kind of ongoing investment that a top level race car does.

Keep making and selling Valkyrie road cars, advertise at sports car events on the backs of your GT cars, most of which are customer teams, save all the money you would have survived developing and supporting without Red Bull's help, put more money into your F1 team.

OR

Realise that just because you have a factory F1 team didn't mean that you can't still work with Red Bull in F1 and elsewhere, keep the Valkyrie deal going with them by hook or by crook, and...well, I don't have the solution for attracting privateer teams to your LMH car if LMDh cars are much cheaper, the same speed, and available for any race team to buy and join.

[dodint]

Keith mentioned in chat that 24LM is now September 19-20.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B94bxbri...=14ac6ldf7l5mv