Part 2 of DSC’s tour of the world of Hypercar and GTP is here, covering BMW all the way to Ferrari. Missed Part 1? Catch up HERE >>>
BMW
BMW’s M Hybrid V8 LMDh car with a Dallara-supplied ‘spine debuted in IMSA in 2023 with a pair of cars contesting the full IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship fielded by BMW Team RLL.
The Turbo V8-powered cars struggled at Daytona on their debut but were much closer to the pace at Sebring, where the late-race carnage gave the team a second-place finish. That was the first of five podium finishes, including a win at Watkins Glen, for the car’s first season, all scored by the #25 car, which finished sixth in the overall standings.
BMW added a full-season WEC programme for 2024 with Team WRT engaged as the factory service provider. Progress was initially slow, but the team were finding pace by the end of the season, with a first (and only) podium finish coming at Fuji for the #15 car.
The #20 car, meanwhile, carried the 20th official BMW ‘Art car’ livery at Le Mans with a scheme from Julie Mehretu.
2024 saw limited success too for the IMSA effort with a one-two finish at Indianapolis pretty much the only standout result of the season for RLL.
The current season has seen the WEC effort take significant strides in terms of sustained pace, and whilst there has been just one podium finish (at Imola), the BMW is seen as a realistic contender for more consistent results. 2025 also saw the car emerge after the first technical ‘Joker’ was taken, for an update involving the braking system.
The current IMSA season has seen the cars on the pace, but strategic blunders have cost the marque the potential for better results. That’s believed to be a key reason why BMW has opted to part ways with RLL at the end of the 2025 season.
A decision on the new service provider for North America was initially planned for May but was delayed, in part due to uncertainty surrounding global trade. Whilst Pratt Miller initially seemed to be in a strong position to take over, interest from WRT in taking on the IMSA programme currently seems to have won the day. We also await a final decision on the scope and scale of the GTP programme for next season.
Meanwhile, the plan for a potential third, privately entered BMW from Team WRT for the 2024 FIA WEC was quietly shelved, along with plans for a third car at Le Mans in 2025. But there are signs that BMW is interested in supplying a customer car in the relatively near future.
Bosch
Bosch supplies the Motor Generator Unit (MGU) for the single-source hybrid drive for LMDh cars and is a key supplier of electronic systems across the Hypercar and GTP classes.
Bugatti
There were vague rumours that Bugatti’s track-only Bolide might morph into an LMH Hypercar, but absolutely nothing of real substance emerged from those reports.
ByKolles
See Vanwall.
Cadillac
Cadillac’s Dallara-based, V8-powered V-Series LMDh was redubbed the V-Series R after its Daytona 2023 debut. IMSA is keen to have its cars described as GTPs, and the WEC is equally keen to maintain the Hypercar moniker.
Three cars were fielded for the opening season – two full-season cars in IMSA, and a single car in WEC. In the USA, there was one car apiece for Cadillac Racing (Ganassi Racing) and Action Express. In the WEC, there is a second Ganassi-run car running under the factory banner in the World Championship.
2023 saw Action Express take the Teams’ and Drivers’ Championship and the Michelin Endurance Cup despite scoring only one race win, at Sebring. Consistent strong points finishes proved to be the key in a super-tight season.
The Ganassi #01, meanwhile, won at Laguna Seca, helping Cadillac to the Manufacturers’ title too.
In the WEC, progress was less visible with just a single podium finish, albeit at Le Mans. A car-destroying accident at Spa for the US-based car disrupted preparation for Le Mans, where the Action Express car had an early accident that left it laps down that could not be recovered. All three cars, though, finished, with the two Ganassi cars finishing third and fourth overall.
2024 saw further challenges in the WEC with big accidents at Spa and Fuji (where the car had been put on pole by Alex Lynn), resulting in a podium-free season.
In IMSA, there were two wins for the solo Ganassi-run car, at Long Beach and Petit Le Mans (the latter with the car in pink livery), the latter result salvaging third in the standings. But it was too late to see Ganassi return at the helm. The Action Express car, meanwhile, had a win-free year and finished fourth in the points.
The big news, though, was the massive switcheroo in service providers: Ganassi were out and in the WEC, JOTA were in for an expanded two-car effort in 2025 on a multi-year deal. It would be a two-car effort too for the new team taking the reins in IMSA, Wayne Taylor Racing, back to the marque with which it had huge success in the DPi era. Action Express would continue with its single car, too.
The early-season results in IMSA in 2025, though, were pretty much a disaster; a fifth place for the #10 car at Daytona was the best result of the first four races for WTR, while AXR missed out on a trip to the podium too. It wasn’t until the round at Detroit that things began to turn a corner.
In WEC, remarkably, fifth place was the best result, too, ahead of Le Mans, this for the #12 car at Spa. It could, though, have been so much better, the two Cadillacs had looked super strong at the Qatar season opener before colliding with each other under the Safety Car whilst sitting one-two!
For Le Mans in 2025, a total of four Cadillacs were fielded, a record for the marque since 2000, with both WEC Jota cars, the Action Express car and a debut at the race for Wayne Taylor Racing.
Alex Lynn would score pole for the #12 Cadillac Hertz Team Jota car and would help teammates Norman Nato and Will Stevens to an eventual fourth-place finish in a race that would see both US-based cars DNF.
The first big result then came earlier this month, when JOTA captured a 1-2 finish at São Paulo with a dominant run, delivering the V-Series.R’s first win on the global stage.
Convergence
The process, announced in early 2020, involved modifying the pre-existing ACO/FIA LMH regulations and IMSA LMDh regulations to allow cars that comply with both sets of technical regulations to compete as a single class.
Cosworth
The legendary British company builds the V12 engines for the Aston Martin Valkyrie in road, track-only AMR Pro, and LMH forms, and is a key supplier of electronics for a number of cars.
Dallara
The Italian motorsport engineering giant supplies the chassis ‘spines’ for the LMDh cars for both BMW and Cadillac, and also built the chassis for the Ferrari 499P. It is also set to become the chassis supplier for the McLaren LMDh programme from 2027.
De Tomaso
Sources close to the revived De Tomaso marque suggested a couple of years ago that a racing hypercar derivative of its forthcoming P72 road car (being built by HWA) might be under consideration.
Interestingly, whilst other sources within the organisation denied the project was under consideration, focusing instead on an extreme track-only car, the positive response the stories received has, at the very least, persuaded the outfit to take a look at the scale of the project that would be required to go racing.
The V12-powered car, though, is still listed here as ‘unlikely’.
Dodge
Another Stellantis brand and another to have been linked to a potential campaign with a car based on the platform of the Peugeot 9X8 for an IMSA programme.
That said, the early noises that suggested this as a real possibility have gone very quiet in recent months, with absolutely no confirmation whatsoever of any sort of live programme. The Dodge brand’s future in motorsport appears to be centred on stock car racing, with the spin-off RAM brand set to return to the Truck Series in 2026.
Driver Ranking
An FIA-operated process whereby drivers, on request to the FIA, are assessed and allocated a ranking from Bronze (for non-Pro drivers) through Silver, Gold and Platinum.
In the FIA WEC Hypercar class, all but Bronze-ranked drivers are eligible. IMSA also do not generally permit Bronze-ranked drivers, but allowed (Bronze-rated) Ben Keating to compete in the 2024 Rolex 24 Hours in a JDC Miller Porsche 963 on a waiver.
The ACO/ LMEM have proposed the first Pro-Am Hypercar class for the Asian Le Mans Series in 2026/27, permitting bronze-rated drivers to compete in Hypercars for the first time in ACO-rules competition.
Duqueine Team
See Isotta Fraschini.
Entop
‘Who?’ You may ask…
This Afghan design studio produced the seemingly road-going Mada 9 ‘Black Swan’ supercar, promoted via a bewildering range of YouTube videos.
With imagery somewhat reminiscent of the Taliban regime, there was something ‘strange’ about the whole affair, not least the fact that the car was apparently powered by a tuned Toyota Corolla engine.
At least two of Entop’s films featured the car with prominent ‘Le Mans 24’ branding on the side of the car, and one mentioned an intention to work with Multimatic to prepare the car to race at La Sarthe.
DSC has established that neither the ACO nor Multimatic had any contact with or from the enterprise.
Fangio
The car dreamed up by ex-Team Veloqx owner Sam Li was never seen in racing specification and has not been heard of since a soft ‘launch’ of the brand at Yas Marina Circuit in early 2022.
There, the team behind the idea to field a road-car-based LMH ran what appeared to be a Ferrari-based front-engined supercar in front of an invited audience.
The car comprehensively destroyed its brakes and little or nothing was heard thereafter from an outfit that had, at one point, seemed set to employ ex-Audi Sport engine guru Ulrich Baretzky.
Ferrari
Ferrari’s 499P is the first top-class sports prototype to be fielded by the factory since 1973.
An entirely in-house designed project by Ferrari – including a Ferrari-designed chassis built for the factory by Dallara, the team fielded a two-car factory effort from the 2023 season under the Ferrari AF Corse banner.
The #50 car scored a shock pole position for Antonio Fuoco on the car’s debut in Sebring in 2023 and a run to the podium, one of four in the season for the car en route to third in the Drivers’ Championship.
The sister #51, meanwhile, had only two visits to the podium. But one of them was the car’s first win, and it came at Le Mans, in the centenary year for the Great Race. James Calado, Alessandro Pier Guidi and Antonio Giovinazzi earned themselves legendary status in Ferrari history in the process.
2024 saw no change to the factory effort but a major change with the addition of a third car, the #83 entered as a privately fielded AF Corse car in a reverse factory livery for Robert Kubica alongside Ferrari factory drivers Ye Yifei and Robert Shwartzman.
The privateer car would take an overall win at CoTA, but the season highlight came with a second Le Mans win, this time for the #50 car of Antonio Fuoco, Miguel Molina and Nicklas Nielsen. That result would play an enormous part in the #50 crew finishing second in the Drivers’ Championship, with the #51 trio scoring only a single podium finish, at Le Mans, with more than one potential strong result falling victim to poor strategy (in particular at Imola) or poor luck (Spa!).
Into 2025 and all three cars returned, albeit with Shwartzman (IndyCar-bound) replaced by Phil Hanson in the #83. The 499Ps dominated at Qatar, a 1-2-3 with the #50 taking the first non-Le Mans win for a factory car. Both Imola and Spa saw wins for the #51.
Le Mans saw all three very competitive, the #83 coming home for a famous win, the #51 third, and the #50 eventually disqualified from fourth. The car failed post-race scrutineering due to missing bolts from the rear wing support, which allowed rear wing deflection beyond the permitted tolerance.
Worthy of note too is that Ferrari has seen fantastic return on investment from its WEC programme, not least because of the launch in 2023 of the 499P Modificata, and unrestricted version of the Hypercar.
It’s not eligible for racing but with full-time Hybrid, ‘push to pass’ boost and a price ticket (including two years trackside support) of over 5 million Euros.
More than 20 have already been delivered to their lucky customers, with a similar number of additional orders understood to still be in the pipeline.
