Farfus: WRT Can Have “Higher Hopes” With New Tire Rules

BMW’s Augusto Farfus believes Team WRT can go into the new FIA World Endurance Championship season with “higher hopes” owing to the new tire allocation rules in the LMGT3 class, which he also feels will lead to more interesting strategies in the class.

In the sporting regulations published late last year it was revealed that LMGT3 teams will now have 24 tires at their disposal for a regular six-hour race, up from 16, with corresponding increases also confirmed for eight and ten-hour races.

This means that teams will now be able to take four fresh tires at each pit stop, assuming that stint lengths remain at approximately one hour as previously.

The changes are likely to come as a boost to BMW, as the M4 GT3 EVO is regarded as being one of the cars harder on its tires in the LMGT3 class.

“I like it because it opens up the strategy,” Farfus told Sportscar365. “You have more tires, but it doesn’t mean you need to use all of them. Depending on the full course yellow, or VSC, it opens the strategy more and I think this is nice.

“When you are so limited on tires, like we have been these last two years, you are put in a corner with the way you use tires. Like this, you can use a half-set, you can take a full set, you can also decide to double the tires. So I think it will become more exciting.

“As a rule of thumb, everybody will take new tires when they box. But some of the tracks you can double-stint; maybe you can save eight or nine seconds at a stop by only changing two tires. Sometimes you might have a VSC halfway through the stint.”

Farfus will share the No. 31 WRT entry this year with Darren Leung and Sean Gelael, with whom he previously drove together in the WEC in 2024.

The Brazilian driver says he is hopeful of an improvement on a 2025 campaign to forget as he and co-drivers Yasser Shahin and Timur Boguslavskiy wound up 10th in the final standings with a best result of third, scored on both Qatar and Fuji.

“I don’t want be too optimistic, because it’s not only the tires that influence the result,” he said. “But I think we can have higher hopes this year than last year.”

One other change in LMGT3 this year is that the Goodyear Eagle Sport Hard, used for three events last year, has been ditched, with the Medium compound tire instead set to be the only tire in use across the entire eight-event calendar.

Asked for his opinion on the change, Farfus was ambivalent, but did point out that the greater consistency will help organizers keep the Balance of Performance closer.

“I am a guy who likes to spice it up,” said Farfus. “I would have been happy to keep the Hard and allow teams to mix up the sets, like they do in Hypercar.

“I think LMGT3 is still quite new, and they are learning about it, so every year they are adjusting it. But I think the new tires in every stint will put everybody closer together.

“And I think also this makes it easier to adjust the BoP. When you have some guys who have new tires, some with old tires, it can make it hard to understand.

“Now they will have some more fixed points to read the situation better.”