Hypercars Facing Reduced Stint Lengths at COTA

Photo: Julien Delfosse/DPPI

Hypercar teams will face reduced stint lengths in this weekend’s 6 Hours of Circuit of The Americas, which Toyota Racing driver Brendon Hartley believes will change the strategy “quite a bit.”

Sportscar365 understands that all Hypercars will have less maximum stint energy compared to previous FIA World Endurance Championship races this season, enough so that will require a seventh stop in the race.

Toyota Racing technical director David Floury told Sportscar365 that the reduction is in the range of 10-15 percent, equally for all cars.

According to Hartley, it will result in all competitors having 3-4 laps less per stint compared to last year’s race.

“Everyone has a lot less energy than previous races, which means the stints will be quite a bit shorter, just from regulation,” Hartley told Sportscar365.

“It’s significant because it means rather than a pretty clear six-stint race, it then all of a sudden becomes almost seven stints.

“It changes strategy quite a bit. It forces you into more double stints on tires, even if the stints are shorter.

“It’s not something just for us but it changes the dynamic of the strategy and when you put your drivers in, and tires.

“That’s going to be something interesting and something to look out for for the weekend.”

Cadillac Hertz Team JOTA driver Jack Aitken, believes it will result in a much more strategic race, with a number of options now being opened.

He told Sportscar365: “You can take that short stint anywhere. You can do it at the start to try and get clean air. We’ve seen that a few times already this year.

“You can mix it somewhere in the middle. It’s just going to be a bit tougher this week because, like a few teams have said already, it’s hot, so you’re not going to see your traditional Driver 1 does a double, Driver 2 does double, Driver 3 does a double.

“You’re probably going to have a lot more people doing singles. It’s hard if you get in with someone else’s tires.

“If Earl [Bamber] starts with a double and I hop in on his tires, it’s a bit of a challenge because you don’t really know what the history of that set is.

“The strategy with those two things combined, there’s quite a lot of options, which is quite interesting.

“I think we need to get on track tomorrow and just see how it is.”

While a reason for the change has not yet been disclosed by the FIA or ACO, Aitken said he believes it’s to help separate the Hypercar and LMGT3 stint lengths, which were set to overlap this weekend on the 20-turn, 3.426-mile circuit.

“I think it’s the right call anyways to reduce the stint energy to avoid the mess in pit lane because we were going to overlap quite a lot with the LMGT3 field,” he said.

“So there was going to be a lot of stops happening at the same time. We’ll avoid that mess and we won’t interfere with each other’s races.

“It will help with the heat in the stints and I think it will be a more interesting strategic race because you can play with that shorter stint.”

Toyota’s Floury, who said the allocation has dropped from around 900 MJ to close to 800 MJ, said they’re hoping to make the best out of the situation.

“It doesn’t complicate so much it’s just the stints will be shorter so we have to do more stints with the same amount of tires,” he said.

“It’s going to change a bit the picture. Normally it should’ve been a bit less than six stints and now we’re going to have probably close to seven stints.

“At the end of the day, it’s the same for everybody so it’s not a game-changer.”

Stephen Lickorish contributed to this report

John Dagys

John Dagys is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Sportscar365. Dagys spent eight years as a motorsports correspondent for FOXSports.com and SPEED Channel and has contributed to numerous other motorsports publications worldwide. Contact John