On their 2016 Le Mans loss, Steeghs admits the team is “it’s more about learning to live with it.”
“It’s a hard one, that’s for sure, but on the other side of things it’s made our team stronger. The experience we had as a team – people came to us, not just teams, not just the ACO or the FIA, but on the outside and even media that in the past haven’t been kind to us. People felt it with us. It was a big help and a real one-off experience. It’s an experience I wouldn’t know where we would get anywhere else, which is also a fantastic thing. It was special, that spirit.”
Toyota have committed themselves to another three years in WEC and will as a result have a large say in how the 2020 rules take shape.
Amidst the backdrop of Formula One’s financial impasse, Toyota has been the most vocal WEC in calling for an arrest on spiralling development cost, with the team even favouring a “token regulation” similar to F1. Toyota Technical DIrector Vasselon admitted last year that cost-capping may be higher on his own team’s agenda, he believes doing so is in the interests of the entire category.
“We are favouring this, because it’s our strategy to ask for it” said Pascal. “We need it and the series needs it. We have tobe careful, because we are very close to entering an ‘F1 crisis’. We feel our position is fragile and then you are left with two manufacturers from the same group – this is fragile as well. What we have proposed is to cap some spending so that it’s not so easy to buy performance.”
On this front, the ACO has suggested that GTE qualifying races could be on the card in addition to longer and shorter main races. A reduction to eight rounds was also mooted as a way of implementing cost-
cutting initiatives.
WEC boss Gerard Neveu said contracts with current promoters weren’t tied the current six-hour race model.
“We’re investigating, why not the idea to do a final longer race, or somewhere to do a shorter race at some other place,” Neveu told Sportscar365.
“It will depend on the place where we go. It will depend if we reduce one race or not. If you reduce one race to save costs and suddenly you do two longer races for 12 hours, you don’t save the money. Never forget, the first question and the first order from Pierre [Fillon, ACO President] is to find a way to reduce costs.”
“As long as the regulations stay similar to what we want, we’re in for the long term,” Steeghs adds. “For sure we and Porsche can carry it for a while but not for ever. That’s important.”
“We know there’s talk of Peugeot and the ACO is talking to potential manufacturers, which is for them to do. That might mean compromise for us, but it depends on how big that compromise is. Over the past few years our development has shown that it’s got to be relevant to our road car technology.
Images: Richard Washbrooke Photography
Images: Richard Washbrooke Photography