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Originally Posted by aneesh99
I'm still wondering how the balance is going to work, how much smaller will the fuel tanks be on hybrids? Are the ACO and/or the FIA going to try and balance it so that a petrol, diesel and the equivalent hybrid combination will all be good for a single stint (like 45 minutes to there abouts) at la Sarthe?
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The fuel tank of a hybrid car is 2 liter smaller. That means 73 vs 75 liter for petrol engines and 58 vs 60 liter for diesel engines.
The performance balance question is a bit more tricky. The
LMP technical regulations contain the following vague sentence about the energy recovery system (article 1.13):
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The Endurance Committee may adjust the performance of any car using such a system, should it enable the vehicle to improve its lap times in a significant manner.
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Then there is the 2% rule in the
WEC sporting regulations:
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17. Balance of performance between the different LMP1 propulsion technologies.
In order to keep the differences between the various propulsion technologies within a 2% margin of the lap time, the Endurance Committee will be able to adapt the performance of the slowest technologies of the cars in accordance with the following conditions:
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I assume that this latter rule not only balances the performance of diesel and petrol engines, but also of hybrid and non-hybrid cars.
The big problem is that the performance of a hybrid system will be track dependent. More braking means more potential KERS activations. At Le Mans the performance advantage of the hybrid system will probably be the smallest of all WEC rounds.