[WEC] BoP. Brilliant or Pants.

[Articus]

Originally Posted by Steve McQ

GT3 is a Pro-Am formula, so it is customer racing. It is nothing more than club racing at the world level.

There are all pro lineups and factory cars in the top class at the Spa 24 hours and the Nurburgring 24 hours. There is also a Pro GT3 category in IMSA. GT3 is not all "pro-am" club racing. Many of the drivers in Hypercar, were previously in these GT3 championships as pro drivers.

[TF110]

Originally Posted by Articus

There hasn't been anything wrong with the BOP on average so there's actually no reason to complain at all. You say there is no "woe is me", and then get right back into the "woe is me". Don't look at single races. Look across the entire season on average. Toyota isn't losing the championships because of BOP. They are losing them because of their own mistakes in Le Mans, Sao Paolo, COTA, and Fuji. You're preoccupied with Fuji BOP but fail to see the bigger picture. The BOP gave everyone a chance across the season.



They are consistent because the 6 car made the fewest mistakes and Toyota made a lot of them. Ranting about BOP weight and power figures makes no sense. The Porsche is an LMDh car. The Toyota is an LMH car. The LMH cars have a higher performance ceiling by virtue of the regulations. There's no championship earned for choosing LMH. It's a BOP formula. If you don't like BOP, you are entitled to your opinion. It's been clear all year that you have a problem when Toyota can't blow everyone away which is fundamentally at odds with the concept of a BOP formula. It doesn't matter how fast your car is. Its a BOP formula. That's why a big fat front engined Toyota saloon car can compete with a mid engined Ferrari 296 in the GT3 category.

This post is mostly opinion, as is mine. But I pointed out that the race by race bop is a bad idea imo, thats why I pointed out the bop, by the race. I don't think you understand the point I was trying to make. This is a championship and with that in mind they need to take into consideration the whole of the championship. It doesn't look good when you give breaks to cars who currently lead the championship. Cars who have won more rounds than any other. I don't see why you say "ranting about bop" when this is the bop thread No one has to agree with the bop, I don't think anyone here agrees it's been perfect this season. But last season when Toyota won every race bar Le Mans, there was a lot of people saying they were favored. How's that look now a year later, when Ferrari and Porsche are on top of their cars? And the LMDH vs Hypercar potential is not supposed to be a thing, there's only the 4wd that's been mitigated by activation speed.

Im pointing out the bop is not looking like much of a balance but more like a handicap for doing well in a race. Hopefully you see that in this post.

[J Jay]

Originally Posted by TF110

This post is mostly opinion, as is mine. But I pointed out that the race by race bop is a bad idea imo

Do you have any alternatives? Because "set and forget" BoP is a non-starter, manufacturers would quickly leave if they got "the wrong end of the stick" and nothing could be done about it over the season. I would absolutely agree that the last-minute adjustments the ACO have made during race weekends on occasion do not inspire confidence.

Originally Posted by TF110

It doesn't look good when you give breaks to cars who currently lead the championship. Cars who have won more rounds than any other.

Confirmation bias. If you already assume that BoP is being applied as success ballast, of course you would see winning/leading cars receiving breaks as wrong.

If you make the more accurate assumption that, as best as the ACO can, BoP is applied to equalise the maximum performance of each car, you would see winning/leading cars receiving breaks as a testament to the team's ability to maximise the potential of their performance window, which was judged to have been lower than their competitors. This is actually why Toyota cleaned up last year (see below), they executed their race strategies better.

Originally Posted by TF110

But last season when Toyota won every race bar Le Mans, there was a lot of people saying they were favored.

... they were wrong. Just like anyone now saying any manufacturer is/is not favoured because they are/are not doing well.

Simple question, simple answer. Let's leave the whatabboutism, unless we actually want to go round in circles (tyres are round, after all!)

Originally Posted by TF110

And the LMDH vs Hypercar potential is not supposed to be a thing, there's only the 4wd that's been mitigated by activation speed.

Unfortunately, it will always be a thing. This is a really good point to highlight the inherent flaws in BoP - it will almost always be the case that either LMH have an advantage due to 4WD, or they are slowed/LMDh are sped up enough that 4WD cannot make it up. And again, this changes race by race.

[Articus]

Originally Posted by TF110

This post is mostly opinion, as is mine.

It's not an opinion that Toyota made mistakes that cost them any fight in the championship. Kobayashi ended the fight of the 7 car in Fuji and gave the 6 Porsche a free pass for Bahrain. Lopez lost Le Mans. They had a fuel system problem in Brazil that pushed the 7 car back to 3rd. Kobayashi broke the rules in COTA. This is simply what happened. You don't need the best BOP at every race to win a championship. Porsche is proving that. They minimized reliability problems and driver errors.

Originally Posted by TF110

But I pointed out that the race by race bop is a bad idea imo, thats why I pointed out the bop, by the race. I don't think you understand the point I was trying to make. This is a championship and with that in mind they need to take into consideration the whole of the championship. It doesn't look good when you give breaks to cars who currently lead the championship.

This is only your opinion. Leading the championship has nothing to do with the performance of the car or the BOP settings. You have a fundamental misunderstanding of how the BOP works.

Originally Posted by TF110

Cars who have won more rounds than any other.

Porsche won 2 races before Fuji (Qatar and Spa). Toyota was in the fight to win 4 races before Fuji (Imola, Le Mans, Sao Paolo, COTA) but made mistakes in 2 of them that cost them the race.

Originally Posted by TF110

But last season when Toyota won every race bar Le Mans, there was a lot of people saying they were favored. How's that look now a year later, when Ferrari and Porsche are on top of their cars?

When 1 manufacturer wins every race bar Le Mans there is a problem in the BOP. You have to be incredibly biased not to see that which is in general the problem in our discussion. It's not about Toyota being "favored". It's about the ACO being wrong with their predictive tools for most of the season.

Originally Posted by TF110

And the LMDH vs Hypercar potential is not supposed to be a thing, there's only the 4wd that's been mitigated by activation speed.

I already discussed how the front differential of the LMH car due to the front mounted MGU-K is a big advantage in tuning of the handling characteristics on the fly. It makes them more stable under braking too by limiting the different in wheel speed across the left and right when they are braking and entering the corner. Activation speed has nothing to do with this. LMDH cars do not have the system. It is up to you to fill in the gaps in understanding of the situation. They are benefitting a lot from this system in the rain in Porsche curves at Le Mans and in low grip situations like old tires. Both Toyota and Ferrari have shown great tire wear at various points this season. It's baked into the tunability of the LMH platform. When the tires wear, they can change the balance in the stint more by opening and closing the differentials on both axles.

Originally Posted by TF110

Im pointing out the bop is not looking like much of a balance but more like a handicap for doing well in a race.

Porsche won 3 races. Toyota won 2 races and threw away 2 that they should have won (Le Mans, COTA). Ferrari won 2 races (and should have won Imola and Spa). This is the definition of balance. Is this not obvious? Compared to last year when 1 make won all races?

It's clear you have a chip on your shoulder about Toyota and BOP slowing them. Your username is TF110...I'm not going to continue a discussion with someone who fundamentally disagrees simply because Toyota isn't winning every race. Toyota had their chances to win this championship without winning every race and they blew it when Lopez spun at Le Mans, when Kamui broke the rules in COTA, when the car broke in Sao Paolo, and when they imploded in Fuji instead of consolidating a top 5 and taking the fight to Bahrain where they should be stronger.

[Adam43]

Race by race BoP is exactly how it should happen. Little and often as more data comes in.

I understand that it can be difficult to follow, but even if you ignore the best way to do the process and think only about perception of it then it is probably still better than not doing anything for a long time and then a bigger movement. Especially as you’d want to do that love before the most important race.

[tomcug]

I think almost everything's been already said here but I'll add one more thing. It's so easy to say that BOP was wrong for car x at race y... after that race. Before the race there can be some expectations from fans and manufacturers themselves but it's the actual racing that verifies if the BOP is ok or not.

So in the end it's never perfect but the goal is for BOP to be as good as possible and imo the ACO had done very decent job so far this season. I don't see anything fixed for any specific manufacturer(s) like Boyota fans seem to like to suggest since their beloved marque lost crazy advantage they had in 2021-2023 seasons. But if the goal is to make BOP absolutely perfect, then I guess we need preview races on Saturday, after which the ACO would make needed BOP adjustments and then an actual race on Sunday. It's a crazy, non-practical idea ofc and one might say what about sandbagging? Simple, same as IMSA did at Daytona for GTD, if you magically find extra pace that wasn't expected to be there, you get penalized I guess that would satisfy all BOP moaners.

But let's go back to reality and since tyre wear was mentioned multiple times, I got one interesting observation. What were the races this year where a specific manufacturer had a huge tyre wear advantage? Imola and Sao Paulo. At Imola the 499P could quad stint at least on one side, others weren't even close to that. And in Brazil it was only Toyota running all race on meds in that heat and having less wear than others. What's crucial here, in Italy it was Ferrari with a big pace advantage vs others and in Brazil it was Toyota. Coincidence that better tyre wear follows great pace? Maybe. But I think it's easier to manage things when you have lots of pace in hand vs others.

[Steve McQ]

Originally Posted by Articus

There are all pro lineups and factory cars in the top class at the Spa 24 hours and the Nurburgring 24 hours. There is also a Pro GT3 category in IMSA. GT3 is not all "pro-am" club racing. Many of the drivers in Hypercar, were previously in these GT3 championships as pro drivers.

I don't give a damn about SRO's GT3, we are in the ACO section here and we talk about the WEC BoP.


If BoP was not a kind of "success ballast" in Hypercar today, it would be published once and for all 3 months before the race. Like it was before LM23. It is not, and the process lacks transparency. That opens the door to any criticism, whether you like it or not that is a fact. Make it more transparent, involve manufacturers in it and put them in front of their responsibility if they are lagging behind. Easier said than done, but the ACO have to try something new and out of the box to have all the banter cease. Two paths : more BoP with more transparency, or less BoP with less modifications.

[Articus]

delete

[TF110]

Originally Posted by J Jay

Do you have any alternatives? Because "set and forget" BoP is a non-starter, manufacturers would quickly leave if they got "the wrong end of the stick" and nothing could be done about it over the season. I would absolutely agree that the last-minute adjustments the ACO have made during race weekends on occasion do not inspire confidence.

I said in my previous post they should leave the Toyota Porsche and Ferrari alone for 2 races and see how that turns out.

Originally Posted by J Jay

Confirmation bias. If you already assume that BoP is being applied as success ballast, of course you would see winning/leading cars receiving breaks as wrong.

I didn't assume that, I said that's more like what they're doing. They're hitting the car that won the race with negative bop. That's like a success penalty more than a balancing. One race doesn't mean that car is dominant at the next.

Originally Posted by J Jay

If you make the more accurate assumption that, as best as the ACO can, BoP is applied to equalise the maximum performance of each car, you would see winning/leading cars receiving breaks as a testament to the team's ability to maximise the potential of their performance window, which was judged to have been lower than their competitors. This is actually why Toyota cleaned up last year (see below), they executed their race strategies better.



... they were wrong. Just like anyone now saying any manufacturer is/is not favoured because they are/are not doing well.

Simple question, simple answer. Let's leave the whatabboutism, unless we actually want to go round in circles (tyres are round, after all!)



Unfortunately, it will always be a thing. This is a really good point to highlight the inherent flaws in BoP - it will almost always be the case that either LMH have an advantage due to 4WD, or they are slowed/LMDh are sped up enough that 4WD cannot make it up. And again, this changes race by race.

I think the bop for certain cars are getting better but is that really their potential? For now maybe it is, but then what happens when they find that magic sweet spot in their setup or something along those lines and some team like Alpine take a commanding win? I would like to see them be consistent and not take away 20hp from them because they simply did a better job.

Originally Posted by Articus

It's not an opinion that Toyota made mistakes that cost them any fight in the championship. Kobayashi ended the fight of the 7 car in Fuji and gave the 6 Porsche a free pass for Bahrain. Lopez lost Le Mans. They had a fuel system problem in Brazil that pushed the 7 car back to 3rd. Kobayashi broke the rules in COTA. This is simply what happened. You don't need the best BOP at every race to win a championship. Porsche is proving that. They minimized reliability problems and driver errors.

Driver's aside, the Porsche car has never taken wild swings in bop and has remained in a pretty tight 'window' of power/weight that doesn't have extremes as much as others like Peugeot or Toyota. I will say that Qatar was an anomaly for the bop because of it being rd.1 and a new track.

Originally Posted by Articus

This is only your opinion. Leading the championship has nothing to do with the performance of the car or the BOP settings. You have a fundamental misunderstanding of how the BOP works.

Again you're misconstruing what I said. There's nothing moreto add if you don't understand me. The cars leading the championship obviously have been consistent and the results show that, so why change them?

Originally Posted by Articus

Porsche won 2 races before Fuji (Qatar and Spa). Toyota was in the fight to win 4 races before Fuji (Imola, Le Mans, Sao Paolo, COTA) but made mistakes in 2 of them that cost them the race.

Porsche was in contention at Imola (2nd place) and at Le Mans until the very end. They've never been far off the pace, nor results. Sao Paulo they were 2nd and 3rd, COTA 6th and 7th

Originally Posted by Articus

1 manufacturer wins every race bar Le Mans there is a problem in the BOP. You have to be incredibly biased not to see that which is in general the problem in our discussion. It's not about Toyota being "favored". It's about the ACO being wrong with their predictive tools for most of the season.

Last year they didn't do race by race bop, and Toyota was the only manufacturer car that wasn't new. I remember saying that then and that this year, when these guys have a season under their belt, they'd be right there even without new bop. Maybe go back and look at the bop for Le Mans forward conpared to now.

Originally Posted by Articus

I already discussed how the front differential of the LMH car due to the front mounted MGU-K is a big advantage in tuning of the handling characteristics on the fly. It makes them more stable under braking too by limiting the different in wheel speed across the left and right when they are braking and entering the corner. Activation speed has nothing to do with this. LMDH cars do not have the system. It is up to you to fill in the gaps in understanding of the situation. They are benefitting a lot from this system in the rain in Porsche curves at Le Mans and in low grip situations like old tires. Both Toyota and Ferrari have shown great tire wear at various points this season. It's baked into the tunability of the LMH platform. When the tires wear, they can change the balance in the stint more by opening and closing the differentials on both axles.



Porsche won 3 races. Toyota won 2 races and threw away 2 that they should have won (Le Mans, COTA). Ferrari won 2 races (and should have won Imola and Spa). This is the definition of balance. Is this not obvious? Compared to last year when 1 make won all races?

It's clear you have a chip on your shoulder about Toyota and BOP slowing them. Your username is TF110...I'm not going to continue a discussion with someone who fundamentally disagrees simply because Toyota isn't winning every race. Toyota had their chances to win this championship without winning every race and they blew it when Lopez spun at Le Mans, when Kamui broke the rules in COTA, when the car broke in Sao Paolo, and when they imploded in Fuji instead of consolidating a top 5 and taking the fight to Bahrain where they should be stronger.

I'm not going to go blow for blow with you on these points, especially you attacking me, the poster instead of the post. I have already said my take on the rule makers balancing the 4wd pretty well imo. Plus if the other makes want 4wd with 'benefits' the front hybrid comes with, they're free to make a hypercar. In my eyes it looks pretty tight and only a couple instances has tire wear been a discrepancy and it went both ways for each type (Qatar and Sao Paulo).

Last point I'll make is, bop can't be reactionary. That's what it's starting to look like. If they do bop then it shouldn't be based on results of the last round because that will lead to sandbagging for a more important race.

[Adam43]

BoP can and should be tweaked every round. It should react to new data! That’s exactly what it should do.

As long as it isn’t actually on results, but on performance data. If you don’t you are deciding to ignore new information and let something continue to be wrong.

And someone will be moaning before anyway. Someone who moans before a race and there aren’t changes will still have the same moan. Even parking that the process theoretically should mean a reassessment each race, if you do change each race then the moaning might average out!

But seriously, what the ACO should not do is legislate for what people might incorrectly think! That way lies madness. Just keep doing your best at every opportunity.

It is never perfectly right, but just keep minimising the amount you are wrong.

[chernaudi]

Maybe I should phrase things this way: do you watch racing because you see it as a sport, or do you see it as entertainment?


As far as promoters and sanctioning bodies go, racing is a form of sports entertainment. And yes, I'm well aware of that phrase's negative connotations, due to it's associations with professional wrestling (which almost everyone knows is rigged/staged typically) and with the guy who created the term, Vince McMahon (enough said there for anyone following his controversies).


But all sports, be it most motorsports and most stick and ball sports, have been trying to boost entertainment value for years to try and draw in new fans, though some of the gimmicks and other things have caused a loss of goodwill with the older fan base. But the fact is that trying to appeal to younger fans is important due to the simple fact that the old guard is in some cases literally dying (sad but true fact).


And younger fans tend to be more biased to the entertainment factor. And as a millennial (though among the old guard as far as that goes), I do see the positives and negatives with that, and I'm for sure not entirely in agreement with things centered around short attention spans and short form content. But it is what it is, and as far as the sport vs entertainment vs sports entertainment spectrum, as far as motorsports, I'm probably in the minority.


IMO, if I just want to be entertained by racing cars, I just watch old races, or historic racing or documentaries. Old races and documentaries are what they are, and as far as historic racing, there's no points, no championships, just guys having fun and fans having fun. A lot of that might be more amateur than full on pro racing, but so be it.


Maybe I'm just not a fan of professionalized racing in the modern era. I'm def. not a fan of NASCAR or F1 with all the egos involved among drivers, teams and the sanctioning bodies and promoters. But that's also where much of the money in the motorsports world gravitates to. Maybe get rid of money, the whole sport would be better?


But back on topic, still not a fan of race to race BOP changes. It does sort of smack to me of either the sanctioning body not getting things right with the basic rules package, that their data about the cars and tracks (which the ACO and FIA have access to) is wrong, or the sanctioning body is trying to contrive things to put on a show (sports vs entertainment vs sports entertainment). But that's the trend, and it's not going away anytime soon unless everyone rebels against the concept (including sanctioning bodies and promoters) and it gets abandoned.


However, I also feel that everyone contributes to the problem, but everyone can also contribute to a solution. Just don't let egos get involved, which is easier said than done, and I do believe that's part of the issue as far as politicking and such. Not to mention that I'm not a fan of stifling innovation (though killing incentive to innovate) or sandbagging to get favorable adjustments from the sanctioning body for a particular race.


This (though I'm sure it'll be controversial) is also why I'm in favor of Le Mans not being a points scoring round for the WEC. The race is totally unique, it's a 24 hour race (only race over 10 hours or 1000 miles on the WEC calendar currently), and the race overshadows the whole damn championship (which I don't like). Not to mention that a poor showing at LM can kill a championship run, while a good run at LM can cancel out a bad showing at a shorter race.


I think that LM should be an All-Star race for the WEC and IMSA (and also even the LMS and AsLMS) that offers a big pay out and bigger bragging rights. Of course, the ACO and the FIA are going to have to front the cash (LM I know doesn't pay a huge purse whatsoever for winning).


And as far as it relates to BOP, Le Mans is also a BOP nightmare, due to it overshadowing the whole championship, its uniqueness as a track, and LM, even now, is an almost "all or nothing" affair.


IMO, BOP is a nightmare for the sanctioning bodies that use it. But as we all know, they're damned if they do, damned if they don't. Either way IMO, they can't win, and it's just the lesser of two evils at this stage.

[Sodemo]

I’d like to know the end goal of the BOP, are we heading towards a situation where in one moment the whole grid will be deemed as “balanced” and then there can be no more changes, or are we still going to be doing these race by race changes merry go round ad infinitum?

[helgi]

Originally Posted by Steve McQ

If BoP was not a kind of "success ballast" in Hypercar today, it would be published once and for all 3 months before the race. Like it was before LM23. It is not, and the process lacks transparency. That opens the door to any criticism, whether you like it or not that is a fact. Make it more transparent, involve manufacturers in it and put them in front of their responsibility if they are lagging behind. Easier said than done, but the ACO have to try something new and out of the box to have all the banter cease. Two paths : more BoP with more transparency, or less BoP with less modifications.

If there's a BoP it should be that way. Transparent for everybody. They used to have a formulae for EoT and, theoretically, everybody could manage to calculate it. There should be equal conditions for all based upon firm rules of HP/kg system. No question, if it's a BoP, it should incorporate calculations for the ongoing round, not just assumptions. As an engineer I clearly see it's impossible to do properly, but they can at least try to show that it's not a guess-game. Not saying about more conspiracy theories that have all the best soil to grow when ACO forbid any talk about it. Just show that you want equal chances, not just cheering those who beg better.

For sure I'm firmly confident all this BoP stuff is an utter cr*p and has nothing in common with sports. You know all that allegories with 10kg shoes for Bolt and so on. If some companies are not able to construct a proper race car (even with the help of outsourcing) they shouldn't ask race organizers to make fools out of fans by trying to show that their hyppocars are really that fast. I have nothing against 2-3 real cars instead of 10 motorized show-mobiles.

Yes, journalists have plenty to write about (all that average stuff about drivers and their thoughts) but it's clear for me that bopped racing is hit by devaluation of sense with a cosmic impulse. Are you orientated at the fan base that seeks for show? Who has said that they'll stick with racing forever and do not throw it away in a year or two when somebody delivers even more Entertaining show. Should ACO really organize some Reverse gear racing events to spice it up for more fans to come? I think that's the only way, because you've already grown a generation of fans who have watched bopped spec racing only.

[tomcug]

Originally Posted by TF110

They're hitting the car that won the race with negative bop. That's like a success penalty more than a balancing.

They don't, this isn't success ballast. It's based on pace, not results. And as Adam said, BOP should react to new data available (I totally agree with that). Now let's look at Toyota, pre-LM their car looked not so quick, maybe Imola was ok but certainly Qatar and Spa weren't. Le Mans should be excluded here as the ACO said themselves, "this is a separate BOP". So what changed between Spa and Sao Paulo? Well, Toyota got a BOP break losing some kgs while Porsche and Ferrari gained weight + there were some power adjustments not necessarily in Toyota's favor (lower power before 250 kph, max power above 250 kph, I have no idea how that differs vs constant 512 kW Porsche had). And now, what happens? Toyota annihilates the competition...

I'm sure the ACO were surprised with that considering their pre-LM performances and from their point of view it was obvious that the GR010 needed to be nerfed for COTA. So they did exactly that and what happened? Again Toyota the fastest but with a smaller margin vs Sao Paulo so the conclusion was simple - the change was right and more nerfing was needed. So they nerfed Toyota again for Fuji and what's more, this time they had last year data available for that track. And what happened last year? Toyota crushed the competition so this new BOP with Toyota having less favorable numbers vs Porsche/Ferrari than last year, seemed reasonable. In the end it turned out they got nerfed a bit too much but as I said before, we know that only after the race.

To conclude, if Toyota sandbagged before LM, they got a funny reward for their funny games. If not, they just are the victim of circumstance. It happens, it's simply impossible to nail the BOP every single track for every single car so consistency is the key and Porsche are the ones consistent this year so they have their reward for that. I don't expect this to convince Boyota fans that BOP isn't fixed for Porsche and Ferrari and there isn't some secret conspiracy against the Japanese marque but well, I just don't see that suggested controversy.

[Adam43]

Originally Posted by Sodemo

I’d like to know the end goal of the BOP, are we heading towards a situation where in one moment the whole grid will be deemed as “balanced” and then there can be no more changes, or are we still going to be doing these race by race changes merry go round ad infinitum?

In theory the adjustments get less and less until it tends to zero, but that would take many many races.

As an example movements tend to be more in newer cars.

And there will be much noise in the data, and difficultly in analyzing. Data will be updated, models will be improved. So it will never completely go away.

[chernaudi]

Also have to factor in car developments and changes. The bar will move every time there's a joker upgrade (which Porsche will be doing for next season), for example.


One area that I do agree with as far as race to race changes is that teams are allowed to introduce joker upgrades at basically any point in the season. So that throws a wrench in the plans for trying to have one main set BOP for a full season, or even just having 1 or maybe 2 windows for adjustments.


And having Le Mans as a points paying round of the WEC and everything surrounding that race doesn't help with matters, either.

[Articus]

Originally Posted by chernaudi

One area that I do agree with as far as race to race changes is that teams are allowed to introduce joker upgrades at basically any point in the season. So that throws a wrench in the plans for trying to have one main set BOP for a full season, or even just having 1 or maybe 2 windows for adjustments.

True for the most part. I think there's a 2 race window before Le Mans where they cannot introduce them.

That, along with a requirement by the FIA and ACO to introduce the update by the Imola WEC round, in order to have two races’ worth of data prior to Le Mans for Balance of Performance purposes, has led to Porsche sticking with its current package for the French endurance classic.

“We do not run [the new crankshaft] in Le Mans,” Kuratle told reporters in Qatar.

“A decision is done… by the governance bodies, both of them, IMSA and the ACO, they set the clear targets of how we have to implement those, the crankshaft, and that won’t allow us to do it before Le Mans.

https://sportscar365.com/lemans/wec/...-post-le-mans/

[KlBD]

Originally Posted by Sodemo

I’d like to know the end goal of the BOP, are we heading towards a situation where in one moment the whole grid will be deemed as “balanced” and then there can be no more changes, or are we still going to be doing these race by race changes merry go round ad infinitum?

From the commercial perspective of the organizers, maybe the ideal for them is a set of BoP rules that still has some changes, but overall is stable enough so that it ensures a period of robust competitor participation and satisfaction that gives them a nice income for a few years until they decide it's time to make a new set of rules.

The ACO has changed its stance in interviews that the hypercar BoP should be about equalizing car potential, but then seemed to shift tone to saying maybe it should adjust for results. I no longer care to catalogue exactly which side of the bed they are waking up on as of late, so in this respect the ACO are not helping themselves manage the ideas that this has stirred up within fans.

Earlier this year in a Vanthoor podcast where the brothers speak with one of the FIA officials involved in the BoP process, the guy says that making the BoP process entirely transparent would just bog down fan attention around something that isn't the on track action. Maybe that's true, but the situation we are in with now BoP is like VAR in football, where imperfect information just fuels even more rampant speculation.

To that end, I have some sympathy for concepts like success ballast - while it may not be exactly sporting, at least it is transparent in its extreme simplicity, and the fans and teams all know beforehand what they signed on for and what to expect.

Also, in choosing to base BoP on observed race pace or results - these two things aren't perfectly correlated, but aren't they at least related? It seems like choosing one can still give observers enough doubt that they can argue you've opted for the other.

[Adam43]

Of course they are correlated. However it is the linking to results that is incorrect, especially when described as success ballast.

But yes, it doesn’t mean that people don’t falsely make that connection.

People make false connections. If it wasn’t BoP it would be something else. As we have seen forever. The it’s not fair accusations aren’t that different to pretty much any decade. Henri could make a lot of noise. And the fans! They’ve never been happy, at least the ones on the internet. (That’s us).

[joeb]

If the ACO publish the changes to BOP every time they make them, why are some here claiming this process lacks transparency? They collect gigabytes of data every round and see what each car is doing. Then they make adjustments to the very few parameters they can control to try and level the playing field. All the entrants knew this was the process before they agreed to make a car to enter.

I'm not sure how this differs from any other sport. Do fans expect to know what the people who run the series/league/tournament of any other sport think about every single aspect of managing the sport? This seems like we are asking to understand things in racing that management controls. They have no obligation to let us know this, do they?

[Adam43]

I agree.

I guess some are claiming that they need to know the formula, or whatever. It’s not going to work like that. It’ll be simulations, models and/or methods. There is zero benefit for the fan in releasing it. The vast majority, as in all but a handful, will get no insight from it. Will only take the wrong thing from it and say the same crap they would have said before and possibly would have said if there was no BoP.

And there is an actual downside. There could well be real manipulation from the teams as they are in the handful who could find it useful. Even Peugeot.

[Articus]

Originally Posted by Adam43

I agree.

I guess some are claiming that they need to know the formula, or whatever. It’s not going to work like that. It’ll be simulations, models and/or methods. There is zero benefit for the fan in releasing it. The vast majority, as in all but a handful, will get no insight from it. Will only take the wrong thing from it and say the same crap they would have said before and possibly would have said if there was no BoP.

And there is an actual downside. There could well be real manipulation from the teams as they are in the handful who could find it useful. Even Peugeot.

Also, people would learn the truth about simulations (They are imperfect) and would not be able to handle this.

One of my favorite sayings:

"All models are wrong, but some are useful"

That is the world that we live in. Simulations are not perfect, and they probably predict the car performance incorrectly more often than you would imagine because this stuff is difficult. Most people simply are not trained in this area and can make no rational input towards the process even if they were shown how it all works. It would be like a neuro surgeon telling the layman about the intricate details of brain surgery. There's simply no use. The public is more likely to misunderstand and spread misinterpretations across social media. A nightmare for the governing body.


At the end of the day, across the entire season, there was no dominant manufacturer. Despite all the accusations of favoritism, nerfing, and so on, the leading manufacturers (Ferrari, Porsche, Toyota, and yes Cadillac) all had opportunities this season to make their mark in the championship hunt. The truth is Ferrari, Cadillac, and Toyota simply made too many mistakes compared to Porsche.

Ferrari:
Penalties in Qatar
Strategy gaffe in Imola
Fuji penalties, collisions, unreliabilty

Toyota:
Conway missing Le Mans for the 7 car, Lopez spinning
7 car fuel problems in Sao Paolo
Kobayashi penalty in COTA. Buemi madman driving in COTA
Fuji implosion

Cadillac:
Crashing at most races


All of them had race weekends where their performance would allow them to win, even dominantly. The 6 Porsche is the only one who completed the entire season without low points.

[chernaudi]

An article that came out this morning that may provide some food for thought and perspectives on the for/against/how much BOP arguments:


https://www.theracingline.media/wec-...QAjy_qqWayHY9Q

[Adam43]

Thanks for the link.

We simply can't have it both ways: we can't have close, exciting racing, but with no BoP. WEC budgets for the year are now in the rough $20 million range for a two-car factory team. That simply isn't enough to develop a car without a strong BoP framework.

Fundamentally this. As we’ve discussed before. Certainly in the why have we got to where we are.

Added to that we get to see so much more of endurance racing now. Stuff that is not as important if one car is miles ahead. As mentioned in passing:

improve handling, tyre wear, and reliability,

+ strategy, racing, driver teams…

But my favorite bit:

That said, I do think WEC needs to stop sharing the BoP tables publicly before every race. It creates discussion of BoP and tends to become the dominant topic at race weekends. (And yes, we at TRL are guilty of this too.)

They have a point. Basically we can’t take it. We can’t understand it and we will just make stuff up. Discussing the changes are almost impossible to do in a rationale way.

What they are calling for is less transparency and the reason is that we can’t be trusted with that information. Which by and large is true.

This bit is in contradiction to that:

Let us know what you think of BoP on social media!

No good can come of that!

[broadrun96]

Sounds like self serving position of you don't know we get to pretend we know from inside info so you have to come to the media to get it and drives clicks/subscription. Or maybe I just don't trust any of those types that want to tell us what we can handle and limit it because arguing isn't good