2015 FIA World Endurance Championship Preview

This weekend marks the beginning of the 2015 FIA World Endurance Championship, the fourth incarnation of the world’s premier endurance sports car series.

Of course, the jewel in the crown is the 24 Hours of Le Mans, which takes places in June, but the WEC also features six-hour events in the United Kingdom (Silverstone), Belgium (Spa-Francorchamps), the United States (Circuit of the Americas), German (the Nurburgring), China (Shanghai International Circuit), Bahrain (Bahrain International Circuit) and Japan (Fuji Speedway) and cumulative points will determine the 2015 World Champions. All races will be live on FOX Sports in Australia.

There are four classes competing in the 2015 World Endurance Championship:

LMP1: the top prototype class, home to the fastest cars in the series driven by fully professional drivers, mostly from factory squads. Toyota are the defending LMP1 World Champions.

LMP2: the secondary prototype class that features privateer efforts, with a mix of professional and amateur (gentleman) drivers. SMP Racing’s Sergey Zlobin is defending LMP2 driver’s champion.

GTE-PRO: the WEC’s top category for Grand Touring cars, featuring fully professional drivers, and is often the most competitive class of racing on any given weekend. AF Corse Ferrari are defending World Champions.

GTE-AM: A class for mostly privateer GT entries, featuring a combination of pro and amateur drivers. Aston Martin Racing are defending GTE-AM World Champions.

Here are some burning questions that we’ll see answered during the course of the 2015 season:

Is Mark Webber set for a big year? With Porsche’s program into it’s second year of racing, I think the answer will be a resounding ‘yes’. Webber, who admits he learnt a lot last year, has two brilliant co-drivers sharing his Porsche 919 hybrid – young New Zealander Brendon Hartley and the experienced German Timo Bernhard – and Porsche showed solid speed in winning the last race of 2014 (in Sao Paolo, Brazil) as well as in pre-season testing this year, so the signs are good. We saw Toyota trail Audi in their first season and a year later they won the World Championship. I’m expecting similar gains for the Porsche squad, and if their pre-season testing is anything to go by, they should be routinely at the front.

Will Audi have the veteran driver presence to go with speed and reliability? The last two off-seasons have been big for the Audi squad. After the 2013 season, diminutive Scotsman Allan McNish stepped out of the car, and a year later, Mr Le Mans, Tom Kristensen followed suit, signalling a definite changing of the Audi guard.

Will the younger driver line-up – Oliver Jarvis takes over from Kristensen, and has arguably the biggest shoes to fill in sports car racing history – exhibit the same sort of maturity that made McNish and Kristensen so good? Time will tell.

It’s one thing to have a fast and reliable car, and another thing entirely to have the vision and wherewithal to make smart moves in the middle of a long race, nor not make them, as the case may be, rather than do something risky and put the car in the fence. You rarely, if ever, saw McNish or TK make a mistake, even when under extreme pressure, and that’s what saw Audi become so successful so quickly. Now, it’s up to the new guys in the Audi bunker to do the same.

How fast are Toyota going to be? Well, Porsche were four seconds faster than anyone else in the open test at Paul Ricard in France last month than they were in 2014, and topped the official timesheets to give the German squad further momentum following on from the victory in final race of last season at Sao Paolo in Brazil, but rumours suggested that Toyota, in a private testing session at the same circuit, were a second faster than Porsche’s lofty mark. If that is indeed true, the rest of the LMP1 prototype field should be very concerned.

How much of an impact will the Nissan entry have? The jury is out for most as far as now much success the revolutionary front-engine GT-R prototype might have when it joins the series in time for the 24 Hours of Le Mans in France. If previous history of teams entering the series is anything to go by, we’ll likely see flashes of brilliance and speed from the Japanese squad and a few reliability issues, too. With testing restricted, playing catch-up against the might of Audi and Toyota won’t be easy.

Is Audi still the team to beat at Le Mans? I believe so. The Audi squad are so good at preparation for the French endurance classic, and seem to be able to rely on cars that are practically bulletproof. They might not always be the fastest cars – and, recently, haven’t been for long stretches of the race – but you can always count on them being around at the business end of the race. We can’t always say the same for other manufacturers. Also, you can’t discount the amount of experience both in and out of the cockpit that the Audi team boasts, from team director Dr Wolfgang Ulrich right down. It will take a giant effort from the Toyota’s and Porsche’s to beat Audi.

Who will win the GTE-Pro class? Hah, good question! This is perhaps the most wide-open class of all. Everyone will be chasing the AF Corse Ferrari squad, but there are serious challenges from Porsche Team Manthey and the Aston Martin Racing team. There are only seven cars in this category, but all of them have a realistic chance at race wins and a championship. If I were a betting man, I’d take the Porsche Team Manthey #92 of Patrick Pilet and Frederic Makowiecki will take it out.

Who are three drivers to watch in 2015? Patrick Long, the only American-born Porsche factory driver, who’ll team with actor Patrick Dempsey in a GTE-Am Porsche; Aston Martin GTE-Pro driver Fernando Rees, who looks set for a bounce-back from a disappointing 2014 season, where everything that could go wrong, did; and Scotsman Ryan Dalziel, who has a full-time LMP2 ride with Extreme Speed Motorsports.