The competitions director of the Automobile Club de l'Ouest, Thierry Bouvet, made this revelation when the ACO and FIA, which jointly administer the WEC, made public the renewed BoP procedures ahead of the opening of the 2024 season, i.e. 1812 km in Qatar this weekend.
“What the BoP will not do is compensate for the lack of optimization in the races: tire choice, driver form, strategic decisions – said Bouvet – We want to let the teams decide; we want them to race.”
A window will be defined within which Hypercars and LMDhs competing in the WEC premier class must fall within, and the BoP will be adjusted up or down for cars outside of it.
The calculations will be based on data from each manufacturer's fastest car after analyzing a huge amount of laps.
This data will then be related to the simulation and an average will then be obtained around which the window will be set.
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Bouvet, however, refused to say how wide this window will be: “You won't have an answer, but it won't be two seconds”, implying that it will not be smaller than the differences found between one manufacturer's cars.
“We analyzed last year and there are differences between two identical cars from the same manufacturer and it would not be reasonable to think we can do better than that. We need to focus a little less on the BoP: the idea is to interfere as little as possible.”
Bouvet explained that changes for cars outside the window at the bottom will be made less quickly than for those at the top.
“When a car is faster, we will tend to react quickly, while if a car is slower, we will act accordingly more calmly.”
He further explained that Le Mans will have its own BoP due to the unique characteristics of the Circuit de la Sarthe. A BoP table will be published for each race, but Bouvet stressed that this does not mean there will be changes for every event, explaining that the figures will reflect the characteristics of each track, in the same way as last year's post-Le Mans BoP year was published with three different tables for Monza, Fuji and Bahrain.
The new system will also take into account the fuel load of the cars and the settings used with the only adjustable aerodynamic device allowed by the LMH and LMDh regulations.
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A further change in the pipeline is the introduction of the so-called “power gain”, which will regulate it below and above 210 km/h to try to match the acceleration and straight-line speeds of the cars.
One more or less figure will be applied to the maximum power, measured in kilowatts, permitted by each car above that speed.
“This gives us another tool to tune the cars and as a result you can have a smaller weight difference. If you add power because a car has more drag, you have to add more weight.”
The power boost system was trialled by some, but not all, manufacturers during the Monday evening session of the pre-event Prologue in Qatar earlier in the week.
The new BoP procedures replace a system introduced for last season, under which a timetable of changes was established for the seven races.
Only one complete overhaul of all cars was planned after Le Mans, with two further changes to the balance between LMH and LMDh – the so-called BoP of the platform – permitted thereafter.
The ACO and FIA unilaterally decided to make changes before Le Mans due to larger than expected performance differences in the LMH cars.
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