What Did We Learn From The 6 Hours Of Portimao?

Round 2 of the 2023 FIA WEC season is in the books, after an intriguing six-hour race in Portimao last weekend which saw Toyota claim its second win of the season.

In each of the three classes there were plenty of talking points that emerged over the course of the weekend in Portugal, concerning the remainder of the 2023 season and beyond.

Here is a closer look at the five major talking points from the meeting:

The equalisation process has a downside

Toyota’s #7 GR010 being pushed back into its garage was one of the key moments of Sunday’s race. The result of the Sebring-winning car losing multiple laps was a podium featuring three manufacturers, as the Japanese make was denied a second 1-2 finish to start the season.

Toyota is no stranger to systems outside of its control throwing a metaphorical spanner in the works though.

Back in 2014 at Le Mans, its race-leading #7 LMP1 was stopped in its tracks by an electrical fire. The root cause lay with the FIA data logger. There will therefore have been a sense of deja vu, when the #7 was forced into the garage for what became a full rear-corner change, despite having no apparent mechanical or electrical issues.

This was because the torque sensor on the corner, which forms part of the system used by race officials to monitor the performance levels of the car, had failed. It is a key and mandatory part of the equalisation process and it has to be functional throughout the race by regulation, leaving Toyota with no choice but to rectify the issue.

There will no doubt be fulsome discussions post-event to determine exactly what went wrong, and exactly what can be done to reduce the chance of it happening again.

Either way, the issue cost the #7 crew a likely podium finish and a possible win. The car came home an eventual ninth in class, after a remarkable 11-minute repair.

Peugeot progress

After a woeful outing at Sebring last month, and what is understood to be a less than successful endurance test at Paul Ricard last week, it would be fair to say that expectations were low for the reliability of the thus-far troubled 9X8s.

However, other than a steering rack change pre-race for the #93, after Paul Di Resta reported a problem with the power steering, (the car starting from pit lane a lap down), the pair of Peugeots both had clean races, with the #94 in the midfield mix with the Cadillac and Porsche throughout.

The car lacked the outright punch of the Toyota and Ferrari though, not helped by the fact that during the race the team was forced to “run different modes” due to power issues relating to the FIA torque sensor.

On a more positive note, feedback from within the team on the car’s new hydraulic gearbox actuator is notably positive. This is a clear step forward in an area that had crippled the effort to this point.

The 9X8 looked far more at home on the Portimao circuit

It must be said also, that the 9X8 looked far more at home on the Portimao circuit which features a far less punishing surface than the venue for the season opener, Sebring. This circuit, which it had tested on before the event, was far more suited it seemed, to the aerodynamic concept of the car, which bodes well for the remainder of the season.

Finally, after the car’s fifth race, it appears that Peugeot has a platform on which it can start to build performance, without the need to use precious time troubleshooting reliability issues.

Progress and potential

The 6 Hours of Portimao saw Porsche’s first podium with the 963, a second place for Ferrari and a fighting display from Cadillac. All three showed real promise for the future of the Hypercar class in 2023 and beyond.

All three still need to find pace to match Toyota, but with time, and perhaps assistance for the LMDh teams in the form of a potential platform BoP change for Spa, the expectation from within Toyota is that it will be caught.

Ferrari will no doubt be looking very carefully at the brake dramas for its #51 499P, and Porsche will hope to overcome the power steering issues that affected both cars during the race, the #5 more so than the #6.

In general, though, there are green shoots across the board from the three new factories. There will be questions as to whether Toyota and Ferrari have too much of a pace advantage over the LMDh machines. It comes down to whether the gap will shrink organically as the teams in the garages at Cadillac and Porsche (that both lack WEC experience and experience with their cars) move through the season. Thankfully we don’t have to wait very long at all until the cars are on track again at Spa, where we will learn even more about the pecking order.

In the non-hybrid ranks, there was a significantly better weekend too from Glickenhaus. Its car ran untroubled throughout the race, and after a slow start, the SCG 007, still struggling to switch on the cold Michelins, the pace was comfortably ahead of the leading LMP2s.

Vanwall on the other hand ended its race with a dramatic, fiery brake failure (understood to have been caused by rubber debris blocking the cooling) that pitched a luckless Jacques Villeneuve into the barriers and retirement. The team will consider itself lucky that the failure happened at one of the slower sections of the circuits.

Supporting classes continue to entertain

Both LMP2 and GTE Am, once again, doled out entertainment aplenty in Portugal.

LMP2 saw the vast majority of the field in contention and involved in multi-car on-track battles which despite occasional carbon-fibre exchange, saw every car come home, albeit, some with visible battle scars.

United Autosports will be delighted with its 1-2 finish after an issue, not of the team’s making, at Sebring, robbed the #23 ORECA of a strong result.

Prema Racing was in the mix throughout the day. WRT meanwhile, had pace, but the team will be left to reflect on whether at times discipline (from its own drivers and some of its competitors) might have undermined its ultimate competitiveness.

Inter Europol’s final result was not a fair reflection of its race-long efforts and the off-strategy #48 HERTZ Team JOTA effort’s hopes were ended by the late-race safety car.

Further down the classification, Alpine will be looking for answers on a continued lack of performance, and Vector Sport was left ruing an early-race fly-by-wire throttle problem, that robbed it of a meaningful finish at a meeting where the #10 car showed truly competitive pace, particularly at the hands of Gabriel Aubry.

Four of the nine drivers on the podium were female, a record in an FIA World Championship race

GTE Am meanwhile, saw the Ferraris back into the mix, which gave the race a multi-faceted multi-car battle, and finally the opportunity to see how Lilou Wadoux has adapted to GTE from LMP2 last year.

The answer to that question was “very well indeed!”. The young Frenchwoman was a star in the middle part of this race, putting the #83 Richard Mille Ferrari 488 GTE into contention, before the Alessio Rovera brought the car home second, ahead of the hugely competitive Iron Dames Porsche, but behind the Corvette.

Notably, Wadou, in second place, matched the best-ever female performance in the FIA WEC (a pair of second places for Iron Dames in 2022), and the #85’s appearance on the podium meant that four of the nine drivers on the podium were female, a record in an FIA World Championship race.

Up front though, for the Pratt Miller-run team, this was another impressive showing. Nico Varrone, Ben Keating and Nicky Catsburg netted a second consecutive win to start the season, made all the more remarkable by the team’s lack of experience at the circuit before the weekend, the success ballast it was carrying, and Catsburg’s defensive drive.

Catsburg deserves plaudits for a squeaky-clean defensive effort while under immense pressure from Rovera in the closing laps. The crew behind the scenes deserve praise too, as quick pit work kept this effort firmly in the race throughout.

2024 is beginning to take shape

It was good to receive more official clarification of the direction being sought for the future of FIA WEC, which matches much of what DSC had already garnered from industry and paddock sources.

Whilst everything comes with the weighty proviso of “subject to FIA Endurance Commission and World Motorsport Council approval”, it is very clear that by Le Mans, we should have clarified what DSC has been observing for many months, that the numerical health of Hypercar means LMP2 is likely to be left off the FIA WEC roster outside of the Le Mans 24 Hours, after this season.

The class will, however, continue in the ELMS and Asian Le Mans Series (and is already confirmed until 2027 in IMSA) and will feature in significant numbers at Le Mans in future years too.

The transition to LMGT3 from the current GTE Am class also looks to be taking shape. Again there is no confirmation yet, though it seems clear that the FIA WEC is prioritising existing teams and manufacturers, whilst in parallel seeking to enhance the diversity of the grid. On the face of it, a two-car limit per manufactures may seem overly restrictive, but in reality, there are more winners and losers if that scenario does come to pass.

The numerical health of Hypercar means LMP2 is likely to be left off the FIA WEC roster outside of the Le Mans 24 Hours

It is worth saying that as things currently stand, DSC would expect a minimum of seven potential two-car teams from different makes, with the potential for tough choices to be made about the available slots on the grid for significantly more manufacturers than that.

Some eyebrows may be raised by the potential for the manufacturers of these customer racing programmes to bare the responsibility for team selection. It remains to be seen whether that will lead to full two-car line-ups with each team, or whether we might see some instances where two teams bring a car apiece.

Speculation in the Portimao paddock was already rife on the ‘who, and with what?’ front, but real clarity on both the actual ruleset and the choices of the manufacturers and teams in play will not emerge until the second half of 2023.

Images courtesy of Jakob Ebrey Photography