The start of the new season has come faster than I could have ever expected! You may have noticed I did not stick to my word on doing a GTE Le Mans notebook, and that there weren’t standalone articles for the prologue, new LMP1 updates or round one at Silverstone; I did not want to publish something I was not confident in. Compared to the run up to the Superseason I have had a big step kicking off my engineering career, and other life changes aligned with the start of Season 8. So, looking onward and upward with this one I aim to catch up with where we stand with WEC. It will cover the following items:

Season 8 LMP1 Updates:

Toyota TS050

The final iteration of the TS050 before the introduction of Hypercar was revealed at the S8 Prologue allowing for speculation on what has changed.









Top: Old TS050 Spec, Above: New Season 8 TS050 Spec



The major difference is in the appearance of the front of the car, and with it a slight change in philosophy around the airflow through and over the car. In recent years the TS050 has had a low nose with a rather chunky keel underneath it extending down to the splitter diverting air around the front axle hybrid units and the tub. The leading edge of this keel was very far forward almost meeting the leading edge of the splitter and the tip of the nose. Either side of this keel were flaps in conjunction with the splitter making the whole front end like a dual element wing. Ahead of the flaps on each side there was a small element diverting air downward under the car/flap to generate more downforce elsewhere (despite generating lift themselves). Removing these to simplify the front end is a good move as small slot gaps get obstructed by debris and tyre marbles adhering to aerodynamic surfaces impacting performance. This redesign should allow the TS050 to maintain performance through the duration of a race, but also be easier to clean in pit stops.









For S8 the upper bodywork of the nose was moved rearward opening up for potentially more airflow through the car to the sidepods for cooling and out the side of the car to move the front tyre wake -think towards what barge boards do in F1 for this. It gives us a nicer view of the flaps inside the front end, and shows how the angle of attack of the flap/splitter combination changes across the span as there is more expansion outboard where the wheel wells are.









Moving the central keel rearward would expose the splitter top surface to more high pressure air, and potentially reduce the yaw sensitivity of the front-end flaps as they will be exposed to clean flow at wider ranges of slip angles/unsteady ambient conditions.

Under the tip of the nose structure sits a pair of vertical fangs/fins presumed to stiffen up the front end. They are slightly ‘toe in’ to describe in suspension terms reflecting the flow direction at this area.









The wing mirrors have been hidden in the front fender for Season 8 cleaning up the aesthetic but also the reducing the frontal area of the car.

Ginetta G60-LT-P

There’s been more testing from this car representative of a real and credible LMP1 entry, giving more bits of development to take a look at.

The brake cooling has changed a lot since the debut of the Ginetta P1. To start with the inlets were low down on the fender above the splitter. In Team LNT spec, they were moved upward and inboard similar to the Dallara LMP2 in style.









The team increased the size of these inlets to get some more cooling flow, however this

was not enough as the team suffered braking problems at Silverstone and Fuji where there was a catastrophic disc failure.









To improve from here I expect another change to the brake cooling. To save money they could clean up the existing duct inside (mostly flexi hose) into a solid smooth duct avoiding a bodywork change. Some flexible ducting is necessary however to account for the kinematic wheel assembly vs a fixed chassis. Intake area could be made bigger, but at a detriment to drag and at a cost of new bodywork components. Shanghai is another track with a huge straight into a hairpin, so if dry I expect Ginetta to have more braking issues if they make no changes here.









Ginetta opted for a higher downforce setup than previously run with for a lot of testing. A second dive plane at the front was paired with a larger rear wing. Even though this was a high downforce/drag setup, the Ginetta cars were 10kph faster than anyone else on the long straight at Fuji.







