Goodyear to Start 2024 Season With Single LMGT3 Compound

Goodyear will start the 2024 FIA World Endurance Championship season with a single LMGT3 tire compound before introducing a second specification later in the year.

The American manufacturer, which bases its WEC operations in Europe, has finalized its initial slick tire compound that will be used in the opening rounds of the campaign.

A second, harder specification will then be rolled out later and deployed at circuits with higher degradation, although teams won’t have the option of switching between compounds during race weekends.

The initial compound will be known as the ‘B’ specification tire and the harder compound will be the ‘C’ specification.

Goodyear’s endurance racing program manager said that it finalized the first of those tire specs at the end of August and took it to a test at Portimao where several manufacturers including Aston Martin, BMW, Lexus, Ford, McLaren and Audi were represented.

Sportscar365 understands that every car that will race in LMGT3 has tested on the final spec.

“The second slick specification won’t be released until the second half of next year,” Mike McGregor told Sportscar365.

“We’ve now defined that we will select which slick specification we take to each track, so it won’t be two specs at a race weekend. At a given race weekend, we’ll select spec B or spec C.”

Hypercar supplier Michelin currently provides three slick compounds – soft, medium and hard — and teams have the option of using two of them during a WEC race event.

According to McGregor, Goodyear hasn’t yet identified the race at which the C will be introduced, although it’s expected to come after the 24 Hours of Le Mans in June.

“We want to do Qatar first to get a race under our belt and understand what strategies people are doing,” he said.

“We know from GTE previously that there was a big mixture in strategies of people double stinting left-hand side tires and right-hand side tires, depending on the track and those sorts of things.

“The fact that Qatar is very left-right bias, we think we’re going to see some of that trend right away.

“It’s just trying to understand what the tire degradation and performance are like, and what strategies people are starting to go with, before we bring the second spec in.

“[The B spec] has got a really broad operating window. So we think at night-time at Le Mans, it’s going to work really well.

“But running at circuits like COTA in 40 degrees C already, and getting some good mileage on those tires, means we’re confident going into Le Mans that the extremes can be managed with that tire.”

This month, Goodyear held an endurance test at Monteblanco with a four-hour break during the night.

Monteblanco is one of several circuits that have been used in Goodyear’s testing along with Valencia, Portimao and Estoril and Paul Ricard.

“It’s been a really intense period and the intensity doesn’t lift off,” McGregor acknowledged.

“We’ve been looking at circuits that are aggressive to the tires to give ourselves the hardest time possible.

“It’s now really looking at getting the right wear rate and getting the teams to have the right understanding of how the tires work. Some of these cars are very well-established and some are new cars.

“We need to understand that the setups are optimized to suit our tire package. That was the big reason for us pushing to invite all the manufacturers to the big test in Portimao.”

Goodyear suggested adding a second compound as part of its application for the exclusive LMGT3 tender, which it won in April.

“Rather than going with a single specification, we believed that with an amateur driver category and to maintain the level of enjoyment and performance, the sensible approach from the start of it would be two specifications,” explained McGregor.

“In theory the second spec will be a stiffer spec and it will target tracks with more abrasive surfaces and higher sliding energy like Bahrain.

“That’s really the big target. We think, as the championship evolves and people understand and push the cars more, it may change for year two on the circuits we could bring the second specification to.

“So it may not stay the same as we move through the evolution of LMGT3.”

LMGT3 Wet Tire Undergoing “Final Tweaks”

Goodyear is also working on its wet weather tire but that has been developed from a different starting point compared with the slick range.

The wet is influenced by the company’s work on GT3 cars at the Nürburgring 24 but the slick develops on its learnings from supplying the European Le Mans Series GTE class.

“We’re just doing some final tweaks to the wet,” said McGregor.

“In terms of consistency and grip level for the wet, we’ve been trying to lean a bit more on some of our learnings from the Nürburgring, because of the variation of temperatures we’re going to have.

“It’s more an ongoing development program, so it’s not something we’ve done aside or specifically [in testing].

“Over the last few years, we’ve been doing wet development in the background specifically looking at GT racing.”