This one is going to be controversial. Because in a year that saw Hypercar and GTP dominate the headlines, it’s not going to be a team from the newly-converged top class that takes this title. And neither is it going to be one of a number of 2023 LMP2 teams that will graduate to Hypercar next season.
First, a number of honourable mentions. In the FIA WEC, Toyota Gazoo Racing dominated. There is little doubt that at present it is the best team, with the best car and the results showed. It did however, not deliver at Le Mans, by the most important race of the year.
Whilst there will be some sympathy with its public statements over Balance of Performance, the level of dominance it displayed elsewhere shows clearly that there should have been enough in hand to win at La Sarthe.
Ferrari AF Corse meanwhile, again, showed much to admire in Year 1 of its new top class programme with the 499P. Its Le Mans win was a stunning result, brilliantly executed. But in this company we note that to do so, required significant politicking around tyre warmers and we note also that at other races in the season, the 499P was nowhere.
In IMSA’s GTP class, it was a year notable from the openness of competition, with six different race winners and title race that featured the majority of the field, which went all the way to the wire at Road Atlanta.
It would be churlish not mention the consistency from Action Express that claimed it and Cadillac as a brand, the inaugural GTP title. But the class will have to wait another year for a chance to claim this one, as this year no team stood out.
That comes down to a two-way battle between a pair of LMP2 teams.
Team WRT scores highly, for an extraordinary team performance, not only in taking the FIA WEC class title in its final, but for doing so while campaigning GT3 cars around the world successfully and undertaking the development programme for the BMW M Hybrid V8 ahead of its Hypercar debut in 2024.
Even that though, isn’t quite enough in DSC’s eyes, because in sportscar racing it’s all-too-often about doing more with less.
There are few better examples of that than the performances of Algarve Pro Racing throughout 2023.
The Portuguese-based, family-owned squad of Sam and Stuart Cox, alongside the huge talent of its technical director David Leech, and in its IMSA campaign with Crowdstrike Racing, with the experience of Jeff Braun adding significant engineering punch, just kept producing the goods.
By the end of 2023, APR had claimed a race win in the Asian Le Mans Series in February and another in the opening weekend of the 2023/24 season at Sebring, a championship win (its first) in the European Le Mans Series (up against the highest quality LMP2 field in series history), an LMP2 Pro/Am win at the Le Mans 24 Hours and the Michelin Endurance Cup in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship.
That’s an astonishing haul and we make zero excuses for handing this honour its way.
