TBK-Light.com

Exactly. To say Stroll with his 20% would have the power to stop the project is silly.I can see it being mainly down to the LMDh regulations, if I was a manufacturer that had committed to the Hypercar regs only for another set to come out that allow you to fight for overall wins in the US and rest of the world for cheaper, I'd be pissed off. So I can see the Hypercars sadly dropping more numbers as fall out

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"An idea whose time has come cannot be stopped by any army or any government"


3x TBKL rFactor Hillclimb champion

Official press release:

https://www.astonmartin.com/en-us/our-w ... me-strong-

Blames the convergence announcement and officially program is "on halt" (yeah sure). Of course doesn't mention problems and delays with the car itself.

Let me say the LMDh announcement was a complete mess.

With the amount of investment factory teams put into top tier endurance racing, you simply cannot announce something so preliminarily without fleshing out the rules more.
It just leaves everybody in standby, waiting for a definitive ruleset to invest resources in.

At the end of the day, if things go completely south like they seem to be going, they'd better swallow whatever cost efficient rules IMSA wants to race at Le Mans and use it as a global platform.

Toyota won't be pleased, to use an understatement, but at least we could have some real competition.

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"IT'S CHAOS! ABSOLUTE CHAOS!"

They (OEMs) probably know more than has been said in public. LMDh is essentially what IMSA envisaged for DPI 2.0, if not simply renamed DPI 2.0.

And to be fair, is the rule set they should have gone with in the first place (as much as I like the Hypercar regulations)


Quote from Aston Martin which I can fully understand

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"An idea whose time has come cannot be stopped by any army or any government"


3x TBKL rFactor Hillclimb champion

Surely more than us and the journalists, but apparently still not enough for manufacturers to actively commit to a ruleset or the other. That's were the ACO/FIA failed, in my opinion.

And I'm not criticizing IMSA at all, as I think the DPi format works very well for a national/continental championship.
I'm just very disappointed to see big manufacturers showing such a tepid interest in WEC that the much smaller IMSA teams actually become the most interested partners. And the ACO has to rely on them to hope and fill up the first tier class grid for the coming years. Obviously, being run on much smaller budgets, IMSA teams demand a less expensive "premier class" as it's in their legitimate interest to do.

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"IT'S CHAOS! ABSOLUTE CHAOS!"

Now Peugeot is umming and ahhing about the Hypercar

https://au.motorsport.com/wec/news/peug ... r/4690634/

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"An idea whose time has come cannot be stopped by any army or any government"


3x TBKL rFactor Hillclimb champion

Go figure...

I mean, what did the ACO expect?

Did they really think that WEC manufacturers would go on investing millions in an Hypercar project, when they were basically told you could slap a GT3 engine into a spec prototype and be in contention for the win at Le Mans, but for a fraction of the budget?

This is becoming a farce, and I don't see a way the ACO is getting out of this without pissing off either the big WEC players (just Toyota, at the moment) or the whole American camp.

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"IT'S CHAOS! ABSOLUTE CHAOS!"

Farce is the right word, they should have just gone with LMDh from the start , although I think gaining wider attention and new fans the Hypercar regs are definitely what would have worked (because they look absolutely badass)

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"An idea whose time has come cannot be stopped by any army or any government"


3x TBKL rFactor Hillclimb champion

Without ACO bending over and even changing the rules merely for Aston Martin the convergence plan would have certain accelerated, because the entire hypercar rules going forward were contingent on getting a 2nd manufacturer onboard.

Toyota (at this stage) are sticking to Hypercar

https://au.motorsport.com/wec/news/toyo ... l/4691122/

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"An idea whose time has come cannot be stopped by any army or any government"


3x TBKL rFactor Hillclimb champion

But then they decided to try and fix that mistake with another mistake. They should have stood their ground and try tro attract more manufacturers to the Hypercar class. And they already got Peugeot's interest.

I don't know how much the whole Stroll-F1 affair contributed to Aston Martin's decision, but it's not the first time Aston announces big plans only to abruptly retire in shame. Just think about the whole AMR-Lola/AMR-One failure and DTM last year. That's not a company I would entrust the fate of a championship to any longer.

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"IT'S CHAOS! ABSOLUTE CHAOS!"

Big hit for the #9

Le Mans entry list:

https://assets.lemans.org/explorer/pdf/ ... s-2020.pdf

Glad to see Takuma Aoki in Garage 56

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"IT'S CHAOS! ABSOLUTE CHAOS!"

https://www.fiawec.com/en/news/postpone ... hamps/6669?

Spa, obviously, postponed.

https://sportscar365.com/lemans/wec/fil ... y-april-15

ACO is adamant that Le Mans will go ahead this year, but of course unlikely in its original date and postponement will be announced by April 15.

Just announced that the 24h du Mans will be raced in September 19-20