Insight: How WEC Reached its Landmark 100th Race
Sportscar365 speaks to some of WEC’s longest-tenured drivers as series reaches 100th race at Fuji…
On Sunday, when the green flag drops for the 6 Hours of Fuji, the FIA World Endurance Championship reaches a remarkable milestone with the 100th race in series’ history.
The inaugural WEC round took place at the 2012 Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring, which at the time was a joint race with the American Le Mans Series (pictured above).
It was a race in which Audi, as the sole WEC LMP1 manufacturer in the wake of Peugeot’s unexpected withdrawal, dominated. Toyota’s arrival would follow later in the year, with the LMP1 field eventually also boosted by the arrival of Porsche and, to a lesser extent, Nissan.
The peak of the LMP1 era from 2014 to 2017 is often considered one of the greatest periods in endurance racing history, pushing the boundary of speed and technology. However, its high budgets were ultimately unsustainable and WEC went through a period of decline from 2018 onwards as Toyota remained the sole major manufacturer in the class.
WEC was then able to reverse its fortunes by pulling the plug on its LMP1 category and, through a long winding road, eventually ended up with the Hypercar category that has led to the record manufacturer participation that we currently see.
To mark the occasion of the 100th WEC race, Sportscar365 spoke to five drivers that have been something of a constant presence through 13 years of world championship endurance racing: Toyota stalwart and four-time world champion Sebastien Buemi, Proton Competition team principal Christian Ried, Porsche factory mainstay Richard Lietz, 2016 LMP1 world champion Neel Jani and Alpine Hypercar driver Fred Makowiecki.
“We can say ‘happy birthday’ because it’s not that easy for a new championship nowadays to stay for that long,” Jani quipped. “We had the Le Mans Series, and then the Intercontinental Le Mans Cup in [2010/2011], so it was already a kind-of half thing, and then finally it was a FIA World Championship, which is what everyone was hoping for.
“The [LMP1] cars were very cool cars and they deserved a proper championship. Everyone was working towards it at that time. From a statistical point of view, it’s nice to say I was there for race one for a series of this magnitude. I was there for the start of A1GP… it had fantastic racing, great crowds, but the financial crisis came at the wrong time.
“It’s not a given that a new championship is still here after 100 races. Also Superleague Formula, the FIA GT1 World Championship, I was in that one too and that one died. I have been in many championships, many of them have collapsed, so for sure it’s not easy.”
Makowiecki, now an Alpine Hypercar driver, recalled the significance of racing under a world championship banner for the first time at Sebring, where he drove a Luxury Racing Ferrari 458 GT2.
“I remember arriving at Sebring and thinking, ‘wow, we are established as a world championship,’” Makowiecki told Sportscar365. “The atmosphere was electric. At that time we had the atmosphere that you find sometimes at Le Mans, where it goes more and more during the week building up to the start of the race.
“To have a race like Le Mans without a championship, it meant everyone just focused on Le Mans. From Sebring, it felt like now there is a proper championship and we can fight all throughout the year, and then in the middle you still have the fantastic part that is Le Mans.
“In 2012 I was not yet with a manufacturer, I was driving for Luxury Racing, but I was fighting to get a chance with a manufacturer. You want to perform well. My goal was to show my performance. As a privateer team, to fight against AF Corse, it was great to show we could fight against them with the same tools and sometimes beat them.”
Buemi, who made his WEC debut at Le Mans in 2012 and has since gone on to make history as the driver with more series starts than anyone else, said the world championship label brought “credibility” after top-class endurance racing was previously represented by the Le Mans Series and Intercontinental Le Mans Cup.
“It was very hard to have an overview of what it was before,” he said. “I thought the first memory is that I was very proud and excited to be racing in the World Championship. Of course, I do remember a little bit the waves of manufacturers, let’s say, coming in and leaving the sport.
“But obviously coming in, it felt a bit weak. The championship was just Audi and us. And obviously it got better with Porsche and Nissan and it got worse again. And now it’s bigger than it’s ever been. So I feel like the championship has grown. We went from eight, nine races, ‘Super Season’, five in a year, COVID, and now back to eight, maybe nine in the future.
“I just feel like the championship has just got more professional in general. I remember the first few races, even the regulations, compared to now, it’s a totally different level. The biggest thing I think is the professionalism and the people involved in the championship.”
That growth and increase in professionalism is a common topic that comes up when asking how else WEC has evolved since its 2012 debut in Florida.
“Just look at the cars and how complex the cars are right now,” said Ried, whose Proton stable ran under the Team Felbermayr-Proton banner for the first race and currently fields both a customer Porsche 963 and two Ford Mustang GT3s in the LMGT3 class.
“You can’t compare the 997 from 2012 with the GTE in 2023. Now the GT3 is much more complex. And if you look at the LMDh, the hybrid system, everything, for sure you need more people, you need more engineering. It’s more complicated, but it’s normal in life and you learn and you bring up the team and the people.”
Makowiecki added: “Back then, with just ten people you could fight against the manufacturers, but now the structures are much bigger. You need two, three times as many people just to run the same cars. The professionalism of the championship went up a lot. We can see the number of manufacturers, and also the teams want to be part of it.
“In GT right now, you can see several manufacturers are pushing to have the possibility, even if we are not in a full Pro category any more, people want to be part of it. We also have to keep the DNA of Pro-Am.”
Makowiecki’s comments about the importance of a Pro-Am structure in the GT ranks, as is currently in place with LMGT3, were echoed by Manthey driver Lietz.
Only one driver (Buemi) has more WEC appearances than the Austrian, who by his own admission only missed one season due to European Le Mans Series commitments and two races because of illness and injury.
He formed the backbone of Porsche’s highly successful GTE-Pro operation, taking eight class victories in that period (including two at Le Mans) and was part of what can be considered the category’s high point in 2018 and 2019, when Le Mans in particular attracted large entries of factory-backed cars.
“For sure, this was a bit of a golden age of GT racing,” Lietz said. “I think there was also a time where people said it could maybe become the the main category if you give a bit more power and less weight. So definitely this was a good time.
“But honestly now seeing Hypercar category working so well and GT racing surviving in a very good way with Pro-Am, I think actually that this concept now is the more sustainable concept.
“Also the interest in Hypercars and LMDh is quite enormous I have to say. I think as long as you keep the Pro-Am category I think it’s also easier to finance for all the teams.
“Definitely we have come from a pure Pro championship to a Pro-Am championship, but in the end racing is quite the same. When I started, back in the days it was ELMS and ILMC and then WEC. I started with Raymond Narac and Patrick Long, which was also a Pro-Am category. For me this is how I learned GT racing to be honest.”
While the GTE ranks particularly flourished towards the end of the 2010s, the top category field began to shrink as first Audi (2016) and then Porsche (2017) shuttered its LMP1 programs.
As a stopgap solution, WEC welcomed privateers like SMP Racing, Rebellion Racing, ByKolles and Ginetta into the LMP1 category. Although these cars often featured strong driver lineups, the superior speed of the hybrid Toyota TS050 Hybrids often made for an uneven playing field and required ever more restrictive success ballast rules to give the non-hybrids a shot at victory.
During these lean years, FIA and ACO officials, later in collaboration with IMSA, worked on the LMH/LMDh formula that has since resulted in an explosion in manufacturer interest and led to what has been dubbed the ‘Platinum Era’ of endurance racing.
Ried, when asked if he expected WEC to rebound from its lesser years in such strong fashion, explained that the allure of racing in a world championship was always going to be a strong draw for manufacturers.
“It’s the only chance for the manufacturers to race on the top level in a sports car,” he said. “They have the option to go to Formula 1, where space is limited, or go to something which is more close to the street cars in GT but also where they can learn on development for them from the prototype. I think it’s the right thing to do for them.”
Makowiecki, for his part, praised the efforts from organizers to keep WEC running through its decline and bring about an upturn in fortunes, but at the same time struck a cautionary note about the series’ future.
“The strength of the WEC is that, even though there have been hard moments, they found a way to stay alive and gave themselves the chance to have the rebound,” he said. “In the end, all the championships have ups and downs. There’s no championship that hits the peak and stays there for 20 years.
“We see it with WRC, the WTCC stopped… it’s tough. What you need is to control the pace of the ‘up’, because when you have a fast ‘up’, you can also have a very fast ‘down’. The championship has never been so ‘up’, probably the strongest era. Even in LMP1 we had three manufacturers in the top class and not that many cars; the best fights were in GT.
“But now we have more than ten, the ‘up’ is mega, and Le Mans sells out so fast in terms of tickets. But when the ‘up’ is fast, the ‘down’ can also be very fast. It’s important to manage this aspect. It’s like when you have a new tire… usually when you have the most grip, you can also lose this grip very quickly.”
Question marks still remain over WEC’s future, both short and long-term. In the next couple of years, an increasing debate about moving to a single ruleset for the top class appears to be the hot ticket item as the series seeks to make its growth in manufacturer sustainability over a longer period of time.
Cast a wider net, and the series faces questions about sustainability amidst a world that grapples with the energy transition question. WEC itself has attempted to play a role in that through the ACO’s push to introduce hydrogen racing to Le Mans, although much remains uncertain about that topic.
“It will be interesting because there is a lot of development going on,” Jani said. “General mobility will change and WEC and Le Mans will change too. After another 100 races, it will be another 13 years, and we’ll be able to see it. I think it will change quite a bit, technically and with many other points.
“We were able to add five more laps a stint [at Le Mans], and maybe after another 100 races we will be at 20 laps. Efficiency is the reason manufacturers do it. Otherwise it doesn’t make a lot of sense to go round in a circle for 24 hours. It’s so you or I don’t have to put fuel in our cars or charge them up as often.
“This will be the biggest thing in the next 100 races. But I won’t have to worry about driving by then!”
We’d love to be able to predict what WEC looks like when it reaches 200 races, but sadly, a crystal ball is not at our disposal. On top of that, if the past 13 years have taught us anything, there will be a fair few twists and turns along the way.
Photos: John Dagys, DPPI, MPS Agency & Porsche