The Endurance World Championship has its long break before returning to Fuji for the penultimate round of the season. The stop thus offers the opportunity to deepen the management of values in the field by the Federation during the last 6 hours of Monza, the stage in which the Peugeot 9X8 made their debut. This was an event of historical significance for the WEC, as for the first time ever, the Hypercar class saw two hybrid cars compete against each other of different manufacturers. The position held by the FIA and ACO in this circumstance reveals what is the conception of the current Balance of Performance in the premier class and how it will be applied when the starting fleet will grow further.
The BoP in force during the Brianza stage saw profound differences between Toyota, Puegeot, Glickenhaus and Alpine. The real aspect of interest for the BoP, however, was the comparison between the two hybrid Hypercars, namely the world champion GR010 and the newly entered 9X8 without a rear wing. Both cars use an all-wheel drive hybrid powertrain, with the electric motor generator on the front axle limited to 200 kW. Combustion units, on the other hand, differ between the two cars, with Peugeot sporting a 2.6-liter V6 while Toyota resorts to a 3.5-liter six-cylinder. However, the technical regulation gives the Federation the power to impose a predetermined power delivery curve for individual participants, in order to encourage the adoption of different architectures for the engine without, however, finding an excessive disparity in grid performance on the field. . Therefore, since the 9X8 and the GR010 adopt an all-wheel drive hybrid powertrain, in addition to the supply curve, there would have been no need to act on other parameters such as weight and usable energy to compensate for the different number of drive wheels, as it was and still is necessary to do with Glickenhaus and Alpine.
Reading the BoP prescriptions for Monza, however, it emerges that different parameters have been set for the GR1010 and 9X8, thus suggesting that the FIA and ACO have not approached them as a single category of all-wheel drive hybrid cars, but as Peugeot and Toyota individually. The minimum weight was in fact 1079 kg for the 9X8 compared to 1071 kg for the GR010, while the usable energy at each stint was limited to 909 and 905 MJ respectively. Small differences also on the power delivery curves, with a peak in favor of Peugeot for 2 kW, just under 3 horsepower. The main difference however was the minimum speed for activating the front hybrid systemset at 150 km / h for Japanese cars and 190 km / h for Japanese hypercars.
Similar differences in the Balance of Performance imposed on the only two hybrid hypercar manufacturers in the World Championship reveal so much about that is that the philosophy behind balancing management also for non-hybrid hypercars such as Glickenhaus and the upcoming entrants Vanwall and Isotta Fraschini, as well as for the LMDh platoon arriving. The concept of the Balance of Performance in the premier class of the WEC is therefore that of a mechanism for smoothing out the macro-design differences deriving from the different engines but not only, also taking into account the different dynamic and aerodynamic behavior.like what happens in the Gran Turism classesor. An approach which it is important to take note of in order to better understand the future dynamics of the BoP, which if well managed can give rise to a high level competition, provided that you do not get to override the sporting aspect by altering the relationships with an artificial balance. strength decreed by the work of setting up the teams.
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