As a whole, 2024 was a memorable year for sportscar racing for the right reasons, with spectacular WEC and IMSA campaigns and countless entertaining GT races organised by SRO. However, there were still a handful of blots on the copybook.
Starting with GT World Challenge Europe, the rain-affected Sprint Cup Race in Barcelona proved controversial. The court hearings and appeal processes lasted until the off-season, with the annulment of the result seeing titles change hands off-track and the final standings confirmed just before the SRO awards. That is never a satisfactory conclusion.
It seems that the saga has led to the departure of SRO’s long-serving race director, and that is to be regretted. Though would be fair to add that DSC was concerned too this year by the lack of action taken at the Spa 24 Hours, in an incident that could so easily have been far worse.
The new crop of GT3 cars for 2024 has taken the whole season to get up to speed in a notoriously tough formula. Ford’s Mustang GT3 arrived with a bellow, literally, but attention was needed early in the season to rectify somewhat self-destructive tendencies. Multimatic and Ford are to be congratulated for how quickly and effectively they dealt with that. But reliability and pace are still very much on the to-do list for year two.
Ford’s countless followers will demand more, and thankfully there is little doubt that the capable minds behind the car will produce the goods.
DSC loves breaking big stories, but there were two in particular that gave us no pleasure whatsoever, both in the top class of prototype racing.
The first was the Ganassi-Cadillac split. It sent shockwaves through the paddocks of IMSA and the WEC in a year that saw Ganassi struggle to stay consistent in IMSA and fail to build on its encouraging 2023 WEC campaign.
The separation prompted an astonishing reshuffle in the GTP ranks and saw JOTA launched to a richly-deserved factory programme, with Ganassi currently on the sidelines for ’25.
The second story concerned the Lamborghini and Iron Lynx relationship, which yielded an ELMS LMGT3 title and a top 10 finish at Le Mans in Hypercar, but precious little else in 2024. With the SC63 needing development, the Huracans underperforming in the WEC and financial challenges approaching due to the introduction of the two-car rule, the alliance simply crumbled.
Lamborghini will retreat from the WEC next season at the very least, as Iron Lynx gets a new partnership off the ground with Mercedes-AMG in the WEC and ELMS (with three cars confirmed for Le Mans). Confirmation of the new service provider for its continuing IMSA GTP programme is expected soon (Riley is understood by RACER to be taking over) and Pfaff has been confirmed as the partner for GTD Pro.
DSC and its predecessors have been reporting on the web for almost three decades now, and therefore knows more than most how the web-based community can get hold of an impression and squeeze the life out of it. Such was the case with Alpine’s engine choice for the A424 Hypercar. After multiple woes for the basic powerplant in F2 form, internet experts predicted the worst in the WEC.
And indeed, that appeared to be the case at Le Mans, with one car blowing up in the most visible way all too early in the race and the other being withdrawn to prevent an identical failure occurring.
That said, Alpine and Signatech’s response has been admirable. A revised engine management strategy was put in place post-Le Mans that has led to some truly encouraging results. And an off-season update planned for 2025 means the team can dream even bigger going forward.
Peugeot meanwhile, introduced its heavily-updated 9X8 after an opening race at Qatar which saw the original wingless wonder in truly competitive form before the team ran its lead car out of fuel at the end. It’s fair to say that the updates to the 9X8 have yet to show the gains intended.
Though reliability has steadily improved on the car and the last pair of races this season saw the gap close, there is still work to be done. And with the untimely exit from Stellantis of motorsport advocate Carlos Tavares, the time to show the form that the car was designed for, is right now.
Still, none of these come close to the biggest disappointment of 2024.
Dailysportscar’s 2024 Disappointment of the Year…
The NLS-NES feud and fog-shortened Nürburgring 24 Hours
Somehow, after the simply terrible start to 2024 for racing on the Nürburgring, the events at the blue-riband 24-hour race were less surprising.
The ill-conceived NES, designed by the AvD to wrest control of racing on the Nordschleife from the long-established NLS/VLN, was a post-COVID complication that absolutely nobody needed.
Its rapid death due to poor support from teams and an alleged pre-meditated walkout from circuit marshals dealt significant damage, with grid numbers taking a hit throughout the NLS season. The grassroots support in particular needs bolstering for 2025, urgently.
And that chaos came before the literal fog descended on the circuit during the 2024 running of the Nürburgring, which ran for less than seven and a half hours and ended in controversial circumstances. It was a major disappointment for teams, drivers, sponsors, fans and the wider local community in a year where weather regularly intervened across the world of endurance racing.
Lest we forget too, that later in the season a tragic incident in the paddock before NLS4 in August added further strain to a truly taxing year.
The NLS organisers have moved quickly to attempt to cover some of the lost ground since, but the Nürburgring 24 Hours (and racing on the Nordschleife in a wider sense) will have a new challenge to overcome in 2025, as it is due to play ‘piggy in the middle’ to the Le Mans 24 Hours and Spa 24 Hours.
The three races are set to be held back-to-back, and all signs point to the N24 emerging as the biggest loser when it comes to the levels of commitment from top-class teams and manufacturers.
There may be valid reasons for each of the three endurance races to retain these slots, but DSC regards the resulting glut as worthy of a very dishonourable mention in this category.
