With the 2024 FIA WEC season drawing closer and closer, Team WRT finds itself with many plates to spin. The Belgian team is having to split its time and resources to the end of the current World Endurance season, where it has an LMP2 title to battle for, the GT World Challenge Europe’s run-in and its intense Hypercar test programme with BMW ahead of the 2024 season.
Next year’s FIA WEC campaign for WRT is set to be its most high-profile venture to date. It will have a significant programme in each of the two classes, headlined by its factory BMW Hypercar effort with the M Hybrid V8.
There is a huge amount of exposure and expectation surrounding the programme. Vincent Vosse will be under no illusions that BMW has high hopes for its return to the WEC as a factory, and is keen to avoid a repeat of its rather lacklustre GTE Pro effort with MTEK back in the 2018/19 season, that fizzled out after a string of underwhelming performances with the M8 GTE.
To ensure it is ready for the colossal challenge that awaits in Hypercar next year, WRT has filled the gaps in its calendar with test days around Europe. To date, WRT has visited Aragon, Barcelona, Monza, Spa, and Portimao, and still has plans to head to Jerez, Paul Ricard and Imola before the end of the year.
There is the potential for WRT to visit the Middle East before the end of the year too, and test in Bahrain and Qatar. But that hasn’t yet been decided.
“We are looking at it,” Vosse said. “It depends on how our other tests go.”
WRT has one key advantage over the other brands set to join Hypercar next season: the M Hybrid V8 is a more mature package compared to Alpine’s A424 and the Lamborghini SC63. This is because it’s being campaigned in IMSA this season by Team RLL, and already has race wins under its belt.
For Vosse, this has made life easier during testing and enabled WRT to maximise its track time without the need to fire-fight the teething problems that every new car suffers.
“This is something I have discussed with Mr Penske,” he said. “He explained to me how difficult it was at the start of the Porsche programme, with all the hiccups. I have to say on our side, of course, it is tough to wait, but I think it was a good decision. We have run our test programme without major issues.
“We have technical support from BMW Motorsport. But the test at Spa recently was run fully by WRT and we have focused on the car’s efficiency.
“There will be a WEC homologation for the car soon, so the recent test in Spa was very important. We have a test in Paul Ricard before the car visits the wind tunnels for homologation too.
“We are running with a car which has been developed, without many issues and has been able to run approximately 800 kilometres a day, every day, during testing.”
Currently, WRT has only taken delivery of a single M Hybrid V8, which is being used as a test car. That will be joined by an additional trio that are currently being built up for next season. Two are being built for the wider WEC campaign, with the third earmarked specifically for Le Mans, where it will act as the previously-announced ‘Art Car’.
Around 80 to 90 per cent of the crew that will run the Hypercar programme next season are existing staff members from WRT.
This, Vosse feels, is important. His staff have had an active involvement since WRT was brought onboard for BMW’s WEC effort and have been learning the ins and outs of the M Hybrid V8 in the background.
“Our relationship with BMW has been smooth,” he said. “We have had a small part of our WRT group that have been to Munich and to RLL and went to Daytona in Janauary to help, support and learn. We had a big part of the group that was there in Munich to build the first chassis. It was completely built by us. The second, third and fourth cars are going to be assembled at the workshop at WRT.
“We are working as a group and it feels like we have been together for years. I am sure there will be stress, but this is the best way to learn as quickly as possible. We have to jump and swim.”
There are two clear goals in Year 1 for WRT. The first is to beat the other LMDh manufacturers on the grid. The second is to compete for race wins against the LMH entries from Toyota, Ferrari and Peugeot.
So far this season LMH prototypes from Toyota and Ferrari have won every WEC race. Is there a concern within WRT that there will continue to be a gap in performance between the front-running LMH and LMDh cars next year?
“The only thing we can do, as a team, as BMW, is to put a package together which is able to fight the best LMDh cars,” Vosse explained. “The rest is not in our hands.
“We have seen so far that LMDh hasn’t been able to match LMH performance easily. But we know that this new era is going to be a balance of performance between the two categories and between the cars.
“There is no reason to complain. We have a job to do, and that’s to be the best of the LMDh cars. And then, let’s see how close the two different platforms come to fight each other. I am not concerned because what I have seen this year, is a very conservative but professional approach to performance balancing.
“We will only know the performance of all these cars in Bahrain. It needs a full season to really see the performance of these cars because everyone is learning. The good thing for us is that BMW has been learning in IMSA and we have learned a lot in testing.
“We need to put that all together in Qatar.”
