Did the EoT (Equivalence of Technology) for Le Mans work?

In short, no – but was it ever going to?

It took two and a half hours for Toyota to open out a lap lead over the Rebellion ORECA Gibsons and the gap was expected to be more than 12 laps by the end of the race. It was clear that the ORECAs had issues that slowed it up during the race, including three clutch sensor failures, and the BR Engineering cars didn’t really show up to the party to show what it could do and the Ginettas were still in a development stage, but the average lap times were far in excess of the half second gap that was targeted.

The number 8 Toyota regularly had fastest stint laps below 3m20s in the hands of each of the winning drivers, while the Rebellion cars never got below that magic target and the overall race pace was far slower.

It must be pointed out that the EoT does not take into account the quality of the teams or the execution of the running of the cars; it takes care of the potential performance and it has to be said that the non-hybrid teams did not show their cars’ full potential. They could not be expected to.

The ORECAs needed more power to cope with their downforce levels, while the BR Engineering cars had reliability and driver issues that accounted for its three cars during the race.

Toyota pretty much ran at the pace expected. The question is; were the non-hybrids unfairly balanced? ORECA estimated that their refuelling was slower than the Toyota by seven seconds at best, 1m05 compared to 1m12, so leaked two seconds per stop on that point alone. Was that because Toyota had better flow into its tank, or because the restrictor sizes were not calibrated carefully enough?

The stint lengths were carefully calculated, ten for the non-hybrids, eleven for the hybrids. This was governed by fuel allocation, so when there was a chance to save fuel through safety car or slow zones, the cars could go further. How much extra in the tank would dictate to some degree how hard they could run the cars, but the calculation was that they could run at full tilt for the entirety of each stint.

So, the final part of the puzzle was the lap time delta, and here the only question was why the non-hybrids did not get to within half a second of the Toyotas.

The non-hybrid teams are all new, and while the FIA and ACO had Toyota’s data from last year’s race so a good picture of the TS050’s potential, they had little or no data from the low drag bodywork of the non-hybrid cars. They had the opening round of the WEC at Spa in May where the cars were scrutineered ahead of running, and the test day for data, after which the teams were asked what their anticipated qualifying and race pace would be. The email, apparently, said that this was to help the FIA with the understanding of the cars rather than to help with the EoT, but the non-hybrids did run under threat of penalty if they exceeded their stated pace.

Simply, they didn’t. Could it be that the manufacturers (BR, ORECA and Ginetta) over-estimated their performance levels in order to sell cars to customers, or was there something flawed in the FIA’s simulation software? Or, did the cars just not perform at the race due to other circumstance? There are so many parameters to running a race car, including tyre selection (which had to be made six weeks before the race when there is no accurate weather data available), as well as team building. Rebellion, for example, is now a combination of former Toyota staff, and the British team members, with the cars now based in the south of France.

It could also be political; Toyota publically stated its worry that the non-hybrids would be close, because they needed as much of a competitive advantage as it could manage.

There were reports of high top speeds, of teams hiding performance and of it being a close race. Ultimately, it didn’t work out like that at all. The race was predictable, Toyota cruised to a win, for the first time bringing home both cars without mechanical trouble or reliability issues. On paper the result was clear before the race started if Toyota could run cleanly, and it did.

Will next year’s race be closer? We all hope so. We have another two Le Mans with these cars before new ones are introduced for the first race of the 2020/2021 season.

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