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The FIA World Endurance Championship will introduce a success handicap to the Hypercar class for 2026, according to the new sporting regulations.
There have been whispers of this in the WEC paddock, but this is the first official confirmation that it will definitely be introduced. Success ballast is already used in LMGT3, although it's been renamed to 'success handicap' for next year, for both classes.
The newly-revised section of the sporting regulations, Article 6.2.2, reads:
Success handicap may be imposed for Hypercar and LMGT3 entered in the Championship (see Article 3.1.1). It will be in effect at all Competitions, except for the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
The calculation system will be determined by the WEC Committee before the first timed session of the Prologue.
This lap time handicap will be transformed into mass and/or power at ACO/FIA discretion which will be communicated in the BOP table sent by the WEC Committee before each Competition.
There are no further details at the moment. We asked WEC for any comments but were told they are not commenting on it at this stage.
Success handicap, otherwise known as success ballast, has been used in WEC before, most notably in the GTE-Am category. This typically sees a manufacturer who won the previous race being handed a weight or power penalty for the next race. It maty also include those who finish in the podium positions, for example.
Success handicap to sit alongside BoP
There have been complaints from fans, and thinly-veiled criticism from teams, about WEC's BoP procedures and process this year.
Phil Oakley
Under the regulations, the teams cannot comment on any aspect of BoP, either the method, process, or implementation.
WEC's aim this year has been to have 100% lap time convergence of all cars, compared to in 2024 when there was a BoP "window" that the cars would sit in.
ACO president Pierre Fillon told French website Endurance24.fr at Fuji that the BoP process was going to be completely reworked for 2026.
"Afterwards, I think we should no longer talk about BoP, but about performance management. We are going to completely rework the BoP process which clearly did not work this year. So the technical teams of the ACO and the FIA, and IMSA for that matter, are working with the manufacturers for next year with something simpler."
However, Fillon also said he believes the process is the problem, not the implementation itself.
"There were too many gaps between races, that's what didn't work. In fact, it's not the BoP that is at fault, it's the process that is in place, which we are going to rework."
What that new process for BoP will be, and how exactly it will work alongside the success handicap, however, has not been revealed yet.
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Change to Hypercar competitor conditions
The other possibly big change is the addition of a new line in Article 3.2.3 of the 2026 sporting regulations, titled Specific condition of entry in the Hypercar category.
In addition to respecting the provisions of Article 3 of Appendix 2 a Manufacturer must enter two cars in the Hypercar FIA World Endurance Championship under the same name appearing on the Competitor licence.
(Emphasis ours, to indicate added part to the regulations)
It's not immediately clear what this means in practice. But it would indicate two different teams, racing a car from the same manufacturer, will not be able to enter the main world championship element, and would instead be restricted to the Hypercar Team World Cup.
This year the World Cup had two competitors: the #83 AF Corse Ferrari, the privately-run car by AF Corse, which also runs the factory Ferrari Hypercar programme, and the #99 Proton Competition Porsche 963.
Feature image: DPPI / WEC
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