Porsche and Toyota make thinly-veiled criticisms of WEC BoP

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It's no secret that Toyota and Porsche, currently the reigning manufacturers' and drivers' champions, are struggling this year.

While Toyota are second in the championship, they've been hit continually by Balance of Performance. The Spa BoP saw them hit with 4kg of extra weight, and 20kW less power.

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This left them with a power-to-weight ratio of 0.449, by far the lowest on the grid at Spa. The post-250kph power-to-weight ratio was better, at 0.486, but still lower than some other teams on the grid.

This meant the Toyota cars were struggling to overtake cars in a straight line down the Kemmel straight at Spa.

“The weight we carry, 1069kg, definitely hurts a bit around here,' said Mike Conway, driver of the #7 Toyota alongside Nyck de Vries and Kamui Kobayashi to Only Endurance before the race.

'The tyre wear, tyre energy, that obviously goes way up. And then obviously with the power at 480kW, you suffer getting out of the corners.

'I think our saving grace probably here is we’ve got decent power at high speed, so that helps with the long straight. At that point we get some [power] back, so that’s okay.'

Looking at the speed trap data, with the recorder positioned at end of the Kemmel straight before the braking zone into Les Combes, the #7 Toyota recorded the fourth fastest top speed — 317.8kph.

The #8 Toyota was considerably slower — 311.4kph. They were only faster than the #36 Alpine, #94 Peugeot and #99 Proton Competition Porsche. The differences in speed between the two Toyotas could be explained by setup — maybe the #8 was running higher downforce in order to be faster in the corners.

After the race, Sebastien Buemi, driver of the #8 car, was visibly frustrated despite finishing fourth.

'The only overtaking we did were in the pit stops,' he told reporters, including Only Endurance.

'Nothing else we can do. I don't feel like I'm able to race like this.

'I'm driving and then the only thing I'm thinking about is, how can I offset the strategy to drive a bit on my own?'

And then you have Kamui Kobayashi. I reported on Motorsport Week that the Toyota team principal said, directly to me, that he believes the Japanese manufacturer has the best car on the WEC grid.

'We have the best car. Best package,' he told me, sitting in the Toyota team hospitality.

I wasn't going to leave it there, though. I probed further, about why they're not winning if they have the best car.

He simply said, with his characteristic grin on his face, 'You know'.

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Porsche's call for 'action'

Meanwhile, Porsche are saying similar things to Toyota, albeit in a different way.

The German manufacturer is struggling a lot more in the championship compared to their rivals. They sit sixth, out of eight, in the manufacturers championship, with just 14 points.

Compare that to this time last year, where they were leading the championship with 83 points. That's a 142.2% difference.

The team are leading the championship in IMSA, too, with four wins in four races.

A manufacturer like Porsche, and a team like Penske, doesn't lose that kind of pace in a championship from one year to the next. Or dominate one championship while struggling hugely in another.

'The team put in another good effort, even if we may not have done everything perfectly,' said Porsche's motorsport vice president, Thomas Laudenbach.

'Still, the drivers and the crew fought until the very end, and I want to thank them very much for that.

'Quite simply, we need to acknowledge that the conditions for a better result weren’t there. As always, we will analyse why, especially since the 24 Hours of Le Mans is up next. But I think there is also a massive need for action outside of our organisation. The race speaks for itself.'

For Spa, Porsche gained 2kg of weight, from 1053kg to 1055kg, but also lost 9kW of power. The loss of power was offset slightly by an increase in post-250kph power, up 509.04kW to 510.796kW. Not exactly much, but in the BoP economy, you have to take whatever you can get.

However, this didn't translate to results. While Toyota finished fourth and seventh in Belgium, Porsche suffered less well, with ninth and 12th.

Laudenbach's call for 'massive need for action outside of our organisation', then, speaks volumes about what the German manufacturer believes about the current state of competitiveness in WEC.

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'Big difference' for Le Mans: Alpine

Finally, as you can imagine at Spa, a big elephant in the room was the next race. It is, of course, Le Mans in June. The race everyone wants to win, whether it be for the double championship points (in Ferrari's case, with their stated aim of winning the world championship) or the prestige of winning the endurance classic.

The issue, though, was simply put by Alpine's Bruno Famin.

'A big difference with that [Le Mans]: we don't know what will be the BoP,' he told gathered media at a team briefing before the race in Belgium.

'We know it will be different, for sure, but we don't know what it will be.'

While other WEC races use a BoP formula set out by the ACO at the start of the year, comprising of a car's 10 fastest laps, and then 60% fastest laps, from the previous three races, Le Mans is different.

It is deemed too important a race to rely on BoP formulas from other races. Therefore, it gets its own BoP, using last year's event as reference and other data as well.

And therein lies the problem. Even in regular WEC races, the teams don't know what to expect from one event to the next. How can a team fully prepare if they don't truly know what weight or power they'll be running?

And, maybe more importantly, if the reigning world champions are struggling for pace, does the process need to be tweaked or looked at again?

Things to ponder as we approach the biggest race of the year.

Feature image: Nick Dungan / Drew Gibson Photography