Lequien: WEC Floating “Creative” New Format Ideas

Photo: James Moy/Toyota

The FIA World Endurance Championship has floated “creative” new format ideas better suited to live television to series’ stakeholders according to series boss Frederic Lequien.

The world championship, which enters its 11th season in 2023, has largely run to traditional race formats, with only evolutions in its qualifying structure over the years.

Lequien told reporters during the recent Qatar event launch they’ve had “interesting discussions” with manufacturers on the potential of spicing up the series with new initiatives, one of them being qualifying races.

First proposed by then-CEO Gerard Neveu in 2017, the concept, which was then earmarked for the GTE-Pro and GTE-Am classes only, ultimately did not materialize amid the WEC’s shift to a winter calendar.

The WEC is set to introduce a slightly revised qualifying format next year that will see separate sessions for all three of its classes, although it hasn’t been considered as anything groundbreaking.

“We have some very interesting discussions with the car manufacturers,” Lequien said. “We’re trying to imagine something different.

“Why not have a kind of qualifying race on Saturday?

“Endurance racing is fantastic but we have to admit that for television, six, eight or 24 hours is very difficult. So we have to be creative.”

Lequien essentially ruled out the possibility of introducing Saturday sprint races, similar to Formula 1, due to pushback from manufacturers, but stressed that he’s open to new ideas to bring more excitement to the championship.

“Of course I can understand that perfectly when you propose to the car manufacturers to do a sprint race on Saturday they would immediately react and tell you, ‘No way, we’re not going to destroy the car the day before the race.’

“We will see. At the moment it’s not the plan. We just have some discussion.”

While the WEC had previously played with the idea of four-hour races during the 2019-20 season, Lequien said it’s not the idea to “change the DNA” of endurance racing.

“What we have in mind is to try to adapt our product for television more and more,” he said. “We do not want to change the DNA of endurance racing. But we have to think about smart ideas that make this sport more accessible to normal viewers.

“Now we have everything. We have the cars, the brands. For example, Spa was incredible. We had a lot of people. At Le Mans this year, we were sold out in two days.

“Something is happening. But we need to continue to work, especially for television.”

Lequien stressed there will be no changes to the format beyond what’s already been announced for next year, indicating that the current explorations would not be considered until 2024 at the earliest.

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