Hyper reality
IMSA’s philosophy is one of low cost and customer racing in its top class, but the manufacturers were pushing for a hybrid system
It’s been a long time coming, but finally IMSA and the ACO sat down at Daytona in January to announce that their separate prototype classes would be brought together. This news was welcomed by all parties, including manufacturers, but then immediately the hard work started to meld these vastly different regulations together.
This story goes back a long way. The ACO and IMSA were working together on a set of regulations that would have united their series before the ACO veered off course and introduced the Hypercar concept in 2018. At the time, Porsche and Toyota were indicating that Hypercar is what they wanted; extreme hybrid technology for lower cost than the current LMP1 cars. The ACO delivered before Porsche abruptly cancelled its programme.
The Hypercar manufacturers have targeted around 850bhp as their power output, but the DPi manufacturers are aiming for 600bhp
At that point the ACO could have changed direction, but it didn’t, and instead at the following Le Mans in 2019 it reaffirmed its commitment to
