2021 FIA World Endurance Championship


The 2021 FIA World Endurance Championship will be the ninth season of the FIA World Endurance Championship, an auto racing series organised by the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile and the Automobile Club de l'Ouest. The series is open to prototype and grand tourer-style racing cars divided into four categories. World Championship titles will be awarded to the leading manufacturers and drivers in both the prototype and grand tourer divisions.
The 2021 championship is due to see a significant overhaul of the technical regulations in the top class of competition. The LMP1 Prototypes used in the top class for the first eight years of the championship will be phased out and replaced by a new class known as Le Mans Hypercars. However, current specification LMP1 cars will be permitted to be "grandfathered" for use in the season.
The 2021 championship will also mark the return to an annual calendar for the World Endurance Championship, which had used a winter calendar for the previous season due to its late running due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Schedule

A schedule was revealed in December 2019 at the 8 Hours of Bahrain, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the previous season was extended into November 2020.

Entries

announced plans to enter the championship under the Hypercar regulations with a bespoke car known as the GR Super Sport Concept.
Boutique car manufacturer Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus revealed plans to enter the championship with a new car, the SCG 007. In June 2020, the team officially committed to a two-car effort.
WEC team ByKolles Racing also announced plans enter with a car based on the ENSO CLM P1/01 LMP1 car.
Aston Martin initially planned to enter a car based on the Valkyrie road-going model. However, the British manufacturer later decided to put its Le Mans Hypercar program on hold.
Long-time LMP1 privateer team Rebellion Racing will end its racing operations at the end of the 2019-20 season, despite having previously announced the joint development of a Hypercar with Peugeot. Peugeot itself continues to pursue the plan to compete from 2022 season onwards.

Regulation changes

The championship will introduce the Le Mans Hypercar category as a replacement for the Le Mans Prototypes. Manufacturers will be free to build and enter bespoke designs without homologation requirement or cars based on existing road-going models subject to a homologation requirement of building at least twenty road-legal models over a two-year period. The cars will have a minimum weight of and may use a hybrid powertrain. The power output will be fixed at to achieve a benchmark lap time of three minutes and thirty seconds at the Circuit de la Sarthe. Cars that use a hybrid powertrain will not be permitted to derive more than from the hybrid system. A Balance of Performance system modelled on the system used by the GTE class will be applied to ensure parity between hybrid and non-hybrid models. Manufacturers will be given greater freedoms in designing the bodywork of Hypercars compared to Le Mans Prototypes provided that bodywork styling does not affect safety standards.
LMP2 cars would receive a power decrease of 40 horsepower, to 560 horsepower, and a specification tyre would be introduced in the class, ending the tyre war between Goodyear and Michelin.
At the World Motorsport Council on March 6, 2020, details emerged on the previously announced LMDh category, in that it would join Le Mans Hypercar as the top category in the series. LMDh will be a common platform to both the FIA World Endurance Championship as well as the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, and will be designed to match performance levels with the Le Mans Hypercar class.