Car O'Clock

Okay, I’m having second thoughts…

I love a good argument, even with myself. After declaring the so-called new supercars/hypercars a waste of time and money in an earlier post (Supercars. So fast, so amazing. So what?) I have just read an article about the Adrian Newey – designed Aston Martin Valkyrie that has caused me to re-assess the whole genre. 

Firstly, I read that Daniel Ricciardo has ordered one and, as a fan of Dan, I’m reluctant to accuse him of being just a rich wanker.  Renault isn’t going to pay him all those millions because he seems like a decent bloke, after all. He is a great steerer and one of the best overtakers on the grid.

Secondly, Christian Horner (Red Bull F1 team boss) has said there’s serious interest in creating a racing series for the track-focused variants of the new breed of ultimate road cars. Now that’s a much better reason for their existence. Instead of gathering dust in a collector’s garage, we could see them being properly exercised by proper racing drivers on race tracks where they probably belong. 

All of a sudden, hypercars have gone from fast, but rather silly trinkets for the filthy rich to proper racing cars that should prove to be spectacular watch when being raced against each other.

The WEC agrees with me!

Blimey, even the WEC (World Endurance Championship) organisers seem to be enthusiastic about a future racing series for hypercars. Support appears to be growing amongst manufacturers too, after years of promoting and racing expensive, horrible-sounding diesel-powered things. And, more recently, fiendishly complicated (and still dull-sounding) hybrids, common sense seems to have prevailed.

Already we have Aston Martin/Red Bull, Mercedes Benz AMG producing their hypercar variants and it’s hard to imagine Porsche, McLaren, Toyota, Ferrari, and others not joining the party at some point. 

Apparently, Toyota is especially enthusiastic about the hypercar regulations applying in 2020/21. As Toyota Technical Manager, Pascal Vasselon, says, “this, for me, is the first time privateers have a real chance. You can’t cap costs, but you make sure you can’t buy a massive advantage.” He continued, “this is the really innovative part of the regulations and is a concept that achieves a lot of what motorsport needs.”

Like the good old days – kind of

It all sounds almost too good to be true. In a few years time, we could be watching racing sports cars that, just like some of their forbears of the fifties and sixties, could be driven to the on the road before and after the race. 

Well, in theory. It’s unlikely to happen in practice, but the racing romantic in me loves the idea of it happening. I enjoy reading those old stories about the blokes in Jaguar’s or Ferrari’s setting off late from the factory and driving like lunatics through the night to make sure they got the race track on time.

Now, I might be getting a bit carried away here. But I think the idea of exotic road cars from prestigious car makers taking each other with extreme sports cars would have surely huge spectator potential.

I’ve also read the current GTE championship cars would continue which is more good news. These are the only cars I’ve been able to relate too in sports car racing for a long time. So we’d still have the slightly more affordable hi-end sports cars like Ferrari 488’s, Corvette’s, Aston Martin’s and Porsche 911GT3’s fighting it out for the class wins. So, a class for hypercars to chase the overall win and supercars fighting for the class wins. It all sounds great to me.

Le Mans 2021 – see you there

Just the idea that hypercars could be actually raced by real racing drivers. That is, rather than millionaire tossers) completely changes my perspective about the genre. So I will take back all those nasty comments I have made before about hypercars being unnecessary playthings for narcissistic jerks. If the proposed new rules for WEC racing do come to pass I, for one, can’t wait to see them. If it does, a future trip to Le Mans is definitely on the cards.