WEC | Aston Martin Postpone Valkyrie Hypercar Project

[ShadowHornet]

Although it should have some appealing to Ferrari, Porsche and McLaren, at least.
And also Aston Martin, Bentley, Lamborghini, Audi, Jaguar, Lotus, Nissan, Bugatti, Koenigsegg, whoever would be trying to sell supersports cars in the years to come.
But maybe the marketing budget is just not there...

The 'Hypercar' category isn't very attractive for any but the major manufacturers and was never going to work.
Typical AM 'on again - off again approach'.

 

[Will Mazeo]

Although it should have some appealing to Ferrari, Porsche and McLaren, at least.
And also Aston Martin, Bentley, Lamborghini, Audi, Jaguar, Lotus, Nissan, Bugatti, Koenigsegg, whoever would be trying to sell supersports cars in the years to come.
But maybe the marketing budget is just not there...

Funny enough most of these are/were more in favor of DPi. Really hypercar was just ACO wet dream pushed by 2 manufacturers and one of them is now gone.

 

[Tar Heel]

GTE will be there and thriving, LMP2 as well probably, so it's really only the top class which would be dead.

Let's see Ford out, BMW out, Chevrolet is not full time. So Ferrari, Porsche, and Aston means GTE is healthy?

 

[Richard Dastardly]

It isn't. DPi2.0 is there exactly to save it. The problem is that ACO didn't listen to logic, Rebellion and the fans saying to go with DPi from the begining, this whole situation would have been avoided.
Funny enough Sports Cars 365 made an opinion article showing how Aston joining hypercar was the trigger for ACO to go with it and now they are out.
There are plenty of manufacturers interested in DPi now, Oreca alone is in talks with 5 so I think the future is bright for those. In the end I think only Glickenhaus will be left in LMH which could end up being canceled (the class) if Toyota decides to leave too since WEC CEO showed no respect for Glickenhaus yesterday, the irony is that they were the first to join hypercar

I'm not sure LMDh is going to save it either - we've already got Toyota saying they're not interested in LMDh because they want to use the top category to show off their tech & buying a chassis & spec hybrid is not going to fulfill their goals; I've always thought that would apply to the Germans too ( Porsche DPs in times past have been an entirely American effort, the WSC95 car was a Joest private effort too originally iirc ) so honestly I'm not really confident we're going anywhere still. Peugeot seem keen & Ferrari said "we'll look at it" but Ferrari have looked at a lot of things.

I liked the original hypercar spec even if it did seem like an ACO concept that should have been explored a bit more first - it seems Aston & Mclaren were pushing to sell road cars off the back of it & it turned into this mess ( you could see it while it was happening... ) but frankly IMO what they should have done was take the hybrid spec rules from hypercar & apply it to existing LMP1, that way there's no EOT and everyone can still source their own chassis, and indeed with the hybrid rules from OG hypercar still show off their tech without gaining a performance advantage. And there's still a lid on the powertrain costs. Ship long sailed now we have no LMP1s left anyway...

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GTE-Am is still healthy.

 

[Will Mazeo]

During these years there has been more manufacturers interested in DPi (LMDh) than hypercars, including Ferrari, McLaren, etc.
Their mistake was waiting all this time to announce it. Had this been decided a year ago we'd see some of these already with cars in IMSA this year as a test for WEC

 

[Chobonator]

Am I the only one here who still doesn't understand what the category is supposed to be?