Written by Evan Veer, Edited by Vyas Ponnuri
The World Endurance Championship (WEC)’s premier hypercar class has witnessed an explosion in entrants over the past two seasons. In contrast to the growing interest from sports car manufacturers, the number of privateer entries have declined with time.
In the run up to 2023’s massive expansion of manufacturer involvement in top class sportscar racing, no team principal or manufacturer representative in the paddock could make it through an interview without being hit with the question: “Are you open to supplying customers?”
With such a spike in media interest, you’d be forgiven for thinking sportscar racing was about to enter a new golden era for privateer teams.
Yet, less than two years after Hertz Team JOTA debuted the first customer hypercar, we are looking at the possibility of both the World Endurance Championship (WEC) and IMSA SportsCar Championship only having a single true customer car each on their respective full-season entry lists for 2025.
So, what’s changed, and how can customer entries make a resurgence into the premier class of endurance racing in the near future?
To start there’s the obvious answer: Money. When asked back in January 2023, Porsche told Endurance-Info about the estimated costs of running a 963 to be somewhere between € 8-10 Million per season, plus another €2.5 Million euros to purchase the car itself.
Although there are no official figures, most reasonable estimates have risen to at least €15 Million for a WEC season in the current climate.
Whatever the true cost may be, the financial support needed to run a hypercar is certainly on a different scale to the usual LMP2 or GT3 program most teams run. In comparison, the estimated cost per season for a single WEC LMGT3 entry is ‘only’ five million euros, already considerably higher than GT categories in other championships.
Meanwhile, the average LMP2 entry comes in at a lower price at a mere € 3.5 million for a full season in IMSA, with the bill for a season in the European Le Mans Series (ELMS) coming at less than half that amount.
Without financial support from manufacturers, most teams will find it a tall order to cover these costs, especially considering how many of them already rely on funding from drivers to make their current efforts possible.
While it is still possible to draw a lot of money from these pay-drivers in the top class, the sheer competitiveness of the class makes entering with amateur ‘bronze’ drivers almost pointless in IMSA, while it is not even allowed in the WEC.
Although well-funded or sponsor backed pro drivers do exist, there are nowhere near enough of them to go around and keep the customer market affordable.
The only option left if you really want to be competitive is to find a partner willing to foot a large part of the bill, which is exactly how JOTA got its two car team off the ground with the help of car rental giant Hertz, as well as a set of other significant sponsorships.
Like professional pay-drivers, these deals are hard to come by, since there aren’t many companies willing to make a large commitment for a venture as risky as this, especially when there are much more stable manufacturer teams available too.
The only major advantage privateers have in this field is the level of control they can get over the team’s branding, since sponsors don’t have to take a backseat to the manufacturer’s wishes for the team image.
On the manufacturer’s side, attitudes have also shifted massively since the introduction of the first full customer Porsches to the grid.
While Porsche itself initially aimed to supply up to eight customer cars between the two major championships by 2024, initial experiences have made it clear just how much the German marque and the paddock at large underestimated the strain customer cars put on the factory side, more so when the program is just starting out.
First of all there’s the added pressure on the supply chain due to the increased number of cars and spare parts to be produced, and even though teams operate independently, there is still some required technical support from the supplier to ensure everything runs smoothly.
Due to the specifics of the LMH and LMDh rule sets, all competitors running the same model must fall under the same homologated version of that car, meaning any updates brought to the factory team must also be installed for all customers, further complicating the car’s development processes.
Aside from the practical concerns, though, it appears most manufacturers also prefer to keep their cars under their own control to ensure stability, and a standard of competitiveness for all of their entries.
Ferrari, for instance, recognised the advantage adding an extra car to the grid can have, but kept its third entry within its own sphere of influence, having it essentially as an extension of the existing factory squad. This increased the amount of data available to the team and made it more versatile when strategies were split on race day.
The likes of Toyota and BMW have reportedly considered adding a third semi-factory entry to their rosters as well, though neither of them have made any serious moves to materialise this so far.
Although these cars are technically classified as privateers, they do not add to the diversity of the field and provide opportunities to ambitious teams the way true independent customer entries do.
Ironically, the final nail in the coffin here is actually the incredibly high level of factory involvement in the class.
The WEC currently hosts a grand total of eight full factory teams with yet more on the way, leading many of the teams capable of running their own privateer hypercars to commit themselves to a much more lucrative factory contract instead.
Compared to an independent effort, a factory program comes with much more technical support and easy access to top-of-the-line factory drivers, without having to deal with the headaches that come with putting together the required funding every year.
This in turn also makes the remaining teams less likely to commit to their own independent programme. In the current market, it is more feasible to try and excel in other championships in the hopes of catching an unaffiliated manufacturer’s attention, than to go through the massive risk and financial burden with a customer hypercar.
Additionally, since the vast majority of the WEC’s grid space is already reserved for factory cars, and more manufacturers considering joining the top class in the future, there is a real possibility of privateers joining now could be pushed out if grid space runs out in the near future.
At this point, the only feasible road to a significant increase in privateer entries for the WEC would be if several present manufacturer entries pull out, either leaving their cars to be operated independently, or more likely leaving altogether, opening up space and opportunities for any customers filling the gap.
Right now, though, manufacturer interest is still fairly stable, but it’s not hard to imagine if a continuing streak of poor results or external pressures could drive out at least a few manufacturers in the next couple of years.
In any case, it’s good to remember how these kinds of shifts are hard to predict, and that it’s just as likely for both championships to keep their grids fully stocked with factory entries for the foreseeable future.
In conclusion, as things stand, there’s very little supply and demand for customer entries in top class sportscar racing, due to the enormous costs and high risk compared to factory efforts, as well as the strain it puts on the manufacturer.
With the sheer depth of manufacturer interest, most teams are better off hunting for factory contracts elsewhere, and even those willing to take on this challenge would likely find it hard to actually secure a slot on the grid with a competitive car and driver lineup.
Given the current state of the prototype racing market, it’s unlikely for any new true customers to pop up in the very near future, despite these trends being near impossible to predict for the long run.
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