The racing series on the cusp of greatness

For many years now, the series has felt like an almost forgotten championship, only stepping into the spotlight when its grid descends onto France to tackle the world’s greatest endurance race: the Le Mans 24 Hours.

But 2024 feels like something of a new era for the World Endurance Championship. And it can all be traced back to a decision made in 2021.

As the championship struggled for not only popularity but also relevance, Hypercar regulations were introduced (replacing LMP1) and it immediately captured the hearts and minds of car manufacturers across the world, with several penning their interest ensuring Toyota would no longer be the sole top-line manufacturer to compete.

Obviously, at the top level of motorsport, you can’t produce a car on a sixpence, and so it’s taken time for several manufacturers to get a car together, but going into 2024, there will be challenges from the likes of Ferrari, BMW, Porsche, Lamborghini, Peugeot and Cadillac, all looking to push Toyota for championship glory.

Now that’s a big swing from the past, when there was often only two or three top-line cars racing for outright victory. And what makes matters even better is the fact that there will be a handful of customer teams also competing in the Hypercar class.

Jota will be fielding two Porsches, alongside Proton who will race with one Porsche 963, AF Corse will compete with a single Ferrari while Isotta Fraschini is a complete privateer.

WEC has not experienced this level of competition in its highest class for years. LMP2 has always been the category to produce the most competition at prototype level and it will no longer feature in WEC, but there’s no need to go looking down the order for competition anymore, it will be at the front. The very front.

And there's a roster of drivers to match, too. Attracting some of the world's greatest racing drivers has always been a struggle for WEC. There’s no doubt that its drivers have always been some of the most talented in the world, but putting Le Mans aside, it’s often missing household names competing all year long.

But the 2024 the Hypercar class will not have one, but 10 ex-Formula 1 drivers racing a full season, including the likes of Jenson Button, Robert Kubica, Paul Di Resta, Daniil Kvyat and recent AlphaTauri driver Nyck de Vries.

The fact that WEC has attracted so many drivers of this calibre for 2024 shows how its popularity is already increasing, and how seriously manufacturers are taking the championship.

It doesn’t stop at the top class either. There’s also plenty going on in WEC’s GTE class too.

McLaren will make its WEC return for the first time since 1998 with its 720S GT3s being run by United Autosports, while Team WRT will field a pair of BMW M4 GT3s, with one of the cars being driven by none other than MotoGP legend Valentino Rossi.

Everywhere you turn household names keep cropping up in WEC, and it’s great to see. It’s what the series so desperately needs.

However, it’s all well and good making progress on the entry sheet, but that doesn't mean the work is over.

WEC needs to ensure that it maximises on this revolution both from a racing and marketing perspective to thrust itself firmly back into the limelight.

It cannot afford to let this opportunity pass by. It has a chance to take the championship to a whole new level, putting itself back on a par with the Group C days; days that the majority of people now look back on as the best era of sportscar racing.

Achieving that level will make these regulations the stuff of legend, and it will also help the other great but underappreciated races share more of the limelight with Le Mans.

Golden chances don’t often come around in this world, let alone within the motorsport industry, but WEC has one going begging right now.

It has to take this moment with both hands. If it doesn’t then it will simply all be for nothing.