when Porsche showed the first Cayenne Hybrid together with the concept car 918 Spyder and the 911 GT3R Hybrid at the Geneva auto-show early February 2010 it was quite a surprise. And the two years of running the GT3R Hybrid provide lots of know-how and ideas for the development of the 918 and production hybrids and even for the 919.
Having more cars on the grid definitely exposes a manufacturer’s technical secrets more-so than running just a factory team. After running Kundensport for a decade, did the implementation of Balance of Performance hinder what you were trying to achieve from a customer stand-point?
It is no secret that I never believed in Balance of Performance and I never will believe in it. It is in contradiction to anything I would think of when I hear the term “sports”. And when you look at the reality it is at least questionable what kind of “relevance” you create with BoP.
Because being more efficient gets penalized. It is the old “higher, further, more, faster” approach. Nothing intelligent. Particularly in the U.S. I more than once had discussions with team owners or car owners that work hard for the money they spend in racing. They do not understand why they get penalized for being successful. And who ever has believed that BoP is a valid tool to limit costs should wake up and face reality.
Ferrari have made big inroads in this area when you consider the small number of entries they started out with in WEC, but their privately run entries still have a hard time against Aston Martin fielded entries.
If LMP1 has shown anything it’s that you can get close racing with a very open rule book. Do you think it can be applied to the GT classes without driving away manufacturers?
There is one fundamental difference between LMP and GT: LMP cars are a kind of “spec cars” because they are based on a set of technical regulations that narrow down what you can do from an engineering point of view. The rest is physics and engineering skills (sounds easy but sometimes is more than challenging). All factors that are used to “balance” different concepts are based on pure physics. So the input is controlled and the ideal of “may the better win” is intact.
On the GT side you have all different kind of car concept and engine concepts that need to be “balanced” in a certain kind. Twenty years ago this was still done by technical regulations in a similar way it is done for the LMP cars.
In today’s GT world it is mainly done by committees that analyze track performance based on a growing number of data that is collected with growing effort. The result of the analysis is believed to be objective and supposed to balance car performance. Everybody who has ever thought about racing, knows that what happens between start and finish line not only depends on the physical or technical car performance but driver, team tires and various other factors need to be taken into consideration.
Coming back to your question: does an approach similar to LMP could potentially drive away manufacturers?
Yes, it could. Would that be the end of GT racing? No, definitely not. Because the current BoP based system has the disadvantage of creating lots of unnecessary discussions and increasing costs that will not get under control and this mid-term is the much higher risk. GT-racing is not only as popular as it is because of the many manufacturers that are involved. But it is also popular because of the high variety of private people that are spending their money each weekend and present their skills. And for these people GT-racing needs to remain financially and emotionally affordable.
In 2017 we’ll have just 4 chassis manufacturers in LMP2 and effectively a one-make LMP3 series. As a cost-cutting measure, does the means justify the end (product)?
This decision was made by the responsible people that had to make it. The potential life-span I may not foresee at the moment.
Company boards have always had a fractious relationship with their motorsport departments. What’s been your secret weapon in convincing the decision makers that a racing project is worth investing in?
When I got into a responsible position within motorsports in 1994, Porsche was selling about 12,000 cars annually and was just coming out of very difficult times. So maybe I never learned to go to Board and just ask for money but to find the right arguments to position a project high enough on the priority list to get it released.
Porsche Factory GTE Programme Set To Continue
Despite reports and suggestions of Porsche potentially taking a sabbatical from GTE-Pro next season ahead of the introduction of a new car for 2017, DSC now believes that we will see a factory GTE Pro effort from Weissach next season though any revised specification of their car for 2016 is unknown.