Aston Martin Racing President David King is next up in our short series of voices from within the process (PART 1 CAN BE FOUND HERE) to determine the shape and scope of the 2020 ‘Hypercar’ regulations, designed to replace the current LMP1 class from the 2020/21 FIA WEC.
David and his Aston Martin colleagues were at the forefront of a move from a group of three manufacturers to fundamentally influence whether race versions of roadgoing hypercars should be included in the new ruleset.
In that they were successful, a short statement from the last FIA World Motorsport Council confirming the change.
So just where do Aston Martin sit now with the current state of affairs as a re-jigged set of regulations are awaited?
“We have been an active participant in the development of the new regs over the last year or so and so we understand some of the challenges that the process has thrown up.
“We welcome the recent changes to allow in racing adaptations of roadgoing hypercars, but the devil is in the detail because whilst that principle is great it does throw up a number of challenges and we are interested in those conclusions.
“We are very interested, there are a number of ways we could go but we aren’t ready to make any commitments just yet but if the regulations work out then who knows? We could be there.
We are very interested, there are a number of ways we could go but we aren’t ready to make any commitments just yet
“The challenge will be to come up with a way of ensuring equality between pure prototype and road-based cars. The BoP process that I think is used very effectively in GTE, I think the intention is that process will be extended to this class but the product solutions are quite likely to be a lot more diverse than they are in GTE so the challenge of performance balancing will be greater.
“All of this is being done by the FIA and the ACO with the support of the manufacturers with the intention of creating great racing between multiple brands in the world’s greatest endurance races and that’s something we all want to see.
What was putting Aston Martin off the prospect of the original proposals for a prototype chassis based formula?
“Most of the manufacturers around the table couldn’t make a business case work for that, despite the FIA and ACO’s best efforts it was still too expensive. That’s why we at Aston Martin, and other members of the motorsport family, have had to take another look at it to see whether there’s another way to make it more affordable for smaller manufacturers without global OEM resources.”
After the Geneva Show, which saw a redefinition of Aston Martin’s top performance bands, with the presentation of a four-tier min-engined future range, it strikes me that if they can get those regulations right the timing couldn’t be better for the brand could it?
“And that’s why we are as interested as we are.
“At Geneva, we did indeed show a full mid-engined bloodline, from Valkyrie we showed the new 003 hypercar and we showed a vision of what a more mainstream mid-engined car could be too. So we have got a lot of potential race car bases there on that stand and that’s exciting, but what way we go, and indeed if we go at all, is still to be decided.
“The most important thing now is that we get a set of draft regulations, that will be the determining factor in the direction going forward, and whether or not, and when we could commit.”
But is there time now to commit for the start of the regulations?
“The timeframes are challenging, and only get more so as time goes on, if we decide to do it there are really two options, be early adopters and frame the reference points, or wait and see where the performance emerges from others.”
The timeframes are challenging, and only get more so as time goes on
And what about the other issue that arises from the Hypercar debate? The future of GTE?
“I’m so proud that we were pioneers in GT3 and GT4 and the fact that we have been able to launch both a new roadgoing Vantage with a full range of GT racing versions of that car over the past few months, and to see the amount of customer interest in those cars is a mark of confidence in what has been achieved over many years, in terms of performance, reliability and customer support and not least in terms of race results!
“We have more than 40 GT4 orders to fulfil this year, and more than 20 GT3 orders.
“We have placed some GT3s with some very important partner teams announced over the past few months in Japan, in Germany and in the UK and we’ll be making more announcements in the coming months.”
And every one of those GT3 cars has the potential to be easily converted to GTE spec?
“Absolutely, much as I was, and the fans were, massive enthusiasts for the V12 engine in the old GT3 we always had the challenge that it was a very different car from the V8 engined GTE and GT4, there wasn’t much commonality between them.
“Now we’ve basically got a turbocharged V8 platform across those three classes there’s a lot more opportunity for commonality. In particular, upgrading a GT3 to a GTE (and back again) is very straightforward and hope that means we’ll see more of our customers as serious partner teams racing their cars in ELMS and maybe in WEC and elsewhere in the future and hopefully over in North America too.”
