Over the final weeks of 2019 we closed the year looking back at the decade, the best races and drivers, and reflecting on what happened.
In the final days of 2019, we do what we do every year and that is put predictions for the following year.
Considering how 2019 ended I thought about what if we planted some seeds and lets see how they sprout over the next decade?
A lot is going to happen and a lot of it could be inconceivable in the year 2020. Did anyone think in on January 7, 2010 that Audi would leave Le Mans, Alexander Rossi would win the 100th Indianapolis 500, Sebastian Vettel would win four consecutive championships but Lewis Hamilton would end the decade with more championships and within eight victories of Michael Schumacher's all-time record and Dale Earnhardt, Jr., Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart, Carl Edwards and Matt Kenseth would all retire before the decade even ended?
It might be crazy to make predictions but let's look at past trends, let's look at what history tells us and also let's use our gut a little bit. Let's make a decision based on the temperature of the water even though the temperature will eventually change.
This is the first of four parts that will come over the course of this month and we will start with sports cars.
1. A manufacture that did not win Le Mans in the 2010s does in the 2020s
Porsche and Toyota did not win at Le Mans in the 2000s but did in the 2010s.
Audi and Bentley did not win at Le Mans in the 1990s but did in the 2000s.
Mazda, Peugeot, McLaren and BMW did not win at Le Mans in 1980s but did in the 1990s.
Rondeau and Jaguar did not win at Le Mans in the 1970s but did in the 1980s.
Porsche, Matra, Mirage and Renault did not win at Le Mans in the 1960s but did in the 1970s.
Ford did not win at Le Mans in the 1950s but did in the 1960s.
Since the race returned after World War II, there has always been a cycle of manufacturers entering and exiting the top class of sports car racing and with the hypercar regulations entering for the 2020-21 seasons, we will see another change at the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
Toyota will be around but Peugeot will come back for the first time since 2011. Aston Martin is returning to the top class. Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus will enter the class. Other manufactures will enter the class.
While other manufactures enter, others will leave. Audi called it quits in 2016. Porsche's LMP1 stint lasted only four seasons.
Toyota will eventually exit the FIA World Endurance Championship and history points that it will not make it through the entire 2020s. Toyota's exit will open the door for other manufactures.
We know of three manufactures with dreams of Le Mans but who else could emerge in the 2020s? Could Ferrari make a long-awaited return to the top class at Le Mans? Could Jaguar make a comeback? Will there be a manufacture that has never been to Le Mans that decides it wants to make an attempt and add its name to sports car history?
It is exciting to think about what could happen over the next ten years.
2. There will be a 24 Hours of Daytona winning car that also wins the 24 Hours of Le Mans
This means we will have some type of DPi/Hypercar convergence.
It is the first week of 2020. Right now it seems like we are trending toward the two sides of the pond and sports car racing getting onto the same page. IMSA wants more manufactures. WEC wants more manufactures. Instead of having two prototype classes that are both fledgling, let's have one set of regulations that allows everyone to play at Le Mans, Daytona, Sebring, Spa-Francorchamps, Road America, Kyalami, Monza, Long Beach, Fuji or Belle Isle.
This could all hit the fans and in 2023 the idea of DPi/Hypercar could be so dead that we could not believe it was ever on the plate. I hope that is not the case and I believe IMSA, the FIA and ACO will see this is the path that is best for all sides. This is what will get more manufactures involved.
I don't know what convergence will mean to both championships. It will still cost a lot of money to run a WEC program and adding an IMSA program will not be cheap. Would IMSA be ok with some manufactures just showing up for Daytona? Would IMSA want the 24 Hours of Daytona to become a race where mercenaries could dominate and we could have years between full-time IMSA teams winning its 24-hour race?
Could we see an evolution of the World Endurance Championship that includes the 24 Hours of Daytona as a co-sanctioned round but the WEC could include a round or two being dropped from the championship results in case manufactures decide to skip Daytona because two 24-hour races is too much or decides to run Daytona but skips another round so the budget to run a full season does not balloon out of control?
I feel like the 2020s will be a time where one umbrella will cover the top end of sports car racing.
3. Intercontinental GT Challenge will continue to struggle to get a stable round in the United States
The Intercontinental GT Challenge has been a fun series in its first few seasons and it brings together a handful of legendary tracks into one championship.
With that said, it has not found great footing in the United States. While races in Bathurst, Spa-Francorchamps and Suzuka seem to be set, IGTC could not get a race at Laguna Seca to draw many entries or fans and now the IGTC will remain in the United States and moves to Indianapolis.
The 2020 season will include Bathurst, Spa-Francorchamps, Suzuka, Indianapolis and Kyalami, arguably the most historic circuits for five continents. It sounds great but GT3 racing does not have a great draw in the United States. Add to that the Indianapolis race will take place in October, during football season. Add to it there is no serious television coverage of the IGTC. Add to it that American GT3 teams did not go to Laguna Seca, likely will not go to Indianapolis and a lot of those teams will be busy with IMSA duties. Add to it that even if 70,000 people show up to Indianapolis it will not look good because Indianapolis is a facility that can hold 250,000 and still have room for almost 100,000 more. Add to it Roger Penske now owns the joint and if this race is not breaking even he will drop it because he will not have the Indianapolis 500 and Brickyard 400 propping up one race.
I think the Indianapolis 8 Hours could have two or three years on the IGTC calendar but I could also see this being a one-and-done.
The IGTC might want to be in the United States but like a lot of motorsports the United States will not really care that the IGTC is here. If Indianapolis doesn't work, the IGTC could go to Austin or Road America or Watkins Glen or Homestead but I doubt any of those event would drastically better than what we have seen in Laguna Seca or what we except to see in Indianapolis. If the IGTC needs a fifth event there are plenty of places around the world that would do a better job than the United States.
4. The Indianapolis 8 Hours (or whatever it evolves into) sticks around
With all that said, I think sports cars have a future at Indianapolis.
With Roger Penske now in charge I think we could have the track shoot a little higher and go for big events.
There have been rumors on and off of an FIA World Endurance Championship race at Indianapolis. When Austin was in trouble, Indianapolis was in the conversation before the Super Sebring weekend was born but Super Sebring might not be as super as it is labeled. Year one was good for Sebring but it was not some great winner. The WEC event went too late on Friday and the race has moved up to the afternoon in 2020. Will a Friday race be a good draw in the United States or around the world?
If Sebring doesn't work out for WEC, Indianapolis will be waiting to snatch a date. I don't know if the race would remain eight hours or if it would be a six-hour race or if it could become longer, perhaps a ten- or 12-hour race, but I would put Indianapolis as the clubhouse leader for the next United States WEC round.
If it isn't WEC, Penske has an IMSA program. We have been talking about an IndyCar/NASCAR doubleheader and before Penske bought the place, Indianapolis Motor Speedway president Doug Boles suggested a great-American motorsports event with IndyCar, NASCAR and IMSA at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. If it isn't some grand event with all three series coming together then perhaps IMSA could fit Indianapolis into the late-summer window of its schedule.
The IGTC race might not stick at Indianapolis but I think we will see a regular sports car event at 16th and Georgetown by the time this decade is over.
5. An Indianapolis 500 winner will win the Bathurst 12 Hour
And Scott Dixon could fulfill this prediction next month, as Dixon is driving for R-Motorsport Aston Martin.
Dixon aside, there seems to be a lot of interest in Bathurst and with the Bathurst 1000 being a difficult race to enter with Supercars regulations, lack of testing time and lack of seats in general, the Bathurst 12 Hour is an easier avenue to race at the Mount Panorama Circuit.
The Bathurst 12 Hour might have the same amount of entries in the top class as the Bathurst 1000 but each car has a three-car lineup, more than the driver pairings in the Bathurst 1000. There are greater possibilities in terms of manufactures and teams for drivers. An American team could enter the Bathurst 12 Hour and have a shot at winning, something that cannot be done with the Bathurst 1000.
Dixon is coming in 2020 but in the next few years we could see Will Power making a trip to his home country to tackle the mountain. We could see Alexander Rossi return and use his Bathurst 1000 experience to attempt the endurance race. Simon Pagenaud would likely take a crack at it. Juan Pablo Montoya and Hélio Castroneves are both in sports car racing now and having success. Running a different race and potentially winning it would only add to their legacies.
Fernando Alonso could complete the Triple Crown in 2020 and in 2021 be at Mount Panorama just looking to do things that have never been done before.
We have seen a lot of specialization in the past 20 and 30 years but in the last few years we have been seeing drivers branch out and run different events. It is getting more and more difficult for drivers to make a living in one series. That is a bad thing for the drivers but for fans and history fanatics it will see drivers go all over the globe to make a living. It will be a throwback to the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, an era everyone marvels at because drivers had to drive everything they could to get a paycheck.
A regional race like the Bathurst 12 Hour will become an international affair with drivers traveling from winter to summer looking to make a few bucks and hopefully a bit of history along with it.
6. GTE will see at least three new manufactures
If hypercar is going to get new manufactures than why shouldn't GTE?
This is more of a personal want. There are so many great GT cars out there and GT3 is loaded with manufactures, meanwhile, GTE is Ferrari, Porsche, Aston Martin and Corvette (but only in IMSA).
The only GTE manufacture shuffle we saw in the 2010s was Ford coming in and BMW coming back.
GTE could have eight or nine manufactures competing. I would love to see Honda bring the NSX into the class. Lamborghini has been stellar in GT3 racing. Bentley has a solid GT3 program. McLaren has won in GT3 in many series around the globe. Mercedes-AMG has been arguably one of the best GT3 manufactures in the last decade. Maybe GTE is how Audi gets back to Le Mans.
In the last few seasons, with manufactures exiting LMP1, GTE was where you could get excited about. Le Mans was fantastic when you had six manufactures competing and the WEC class GTE-Pro had ten strong entries.
A little more than a decade ago we had the FIA GT1 World Championship and two years ago it felt a GTE world championship could stand on its own, especially with a few more manufactures. We are a little further away from that in the year 2020 but I think there are manufactures that will not want to spend what it will cost to run in the hypercar class but will want to be at Le Mans and in the world championship. In that case, GTE will be the only option.
7. There will be an electric/hybrid class at the 24 Hours of Le Mans
I am not sure we are going to make it to 2030 but if we do we are heading to a stated date when many manufactures will be producing either only electric vehicles or every vehicle will at least have hybrid systems.
With that being the case we are bound to see GT cars having hybrid systems. I thought the last decade was when we would see hybrids in GTE, especially after Porsche ran the 997-GT3 R Hybrid and famously finished ahead of all the GT cars in the 2011 American Le Mans Series race at Laguna Seca.
That didn't happened but I think it is going to happen in the 2020s. The automotive world is going to force it. Change is going to come this decade. The class might not come until 2027 or 2028 or 2029 but it will come and the motorsport world is going to look different when this decade is over. It has to look different.
Different will not be bad. It is part of evolution and an electric class or a hybrid class will help the development of the road product. A race like Le Mans and a championship like the FIA World Endurance Championship is the best place to develop electric range and reliability. It is a place for fast-charging or battery-swap technology. The FIA and ACO should want to take on this challenge. Formula E has been a breeding ground for manufactures. If manufactures are going to be moving toward more electric technology in a car then the FIA and ACO will have to be inclusive to doing the same to keep the WEC alive.
8. The FIA World Endurance Championship visits at least four new tracks to this decade (excluding Monza and Kyalami) and will visit Australia
We already know Monza and Kyalami are coming in the 2020-21 season so this is really from 2021 to 2029, still plenty of time for more races to come and go.
There are only eight to nine races on the WEC calendar. Some races are stable, others not so much.
With only eight to nine races a season that means WEC can only hit so many tracks and markets and the series is open to some rotation. Some races are not going anywhere, Le Mans, Spa-Francorchamps, Silverstone, but the rest are open to replacements.
I think Australia will get a race because it is motorsports mad and The Bend Motorsports Park is going to be due for a big international race. The Bend has already made it know it wants a MotoGP event or World Superbike event. I think Formula One is just a little too out of reach for The Bend. I don't think The Bend will be to the 2020s what Portimão was to the 2010s, a promising venue when built but never got an event it deserved.
What other tracks could the series go to?
Suzuka has already been rumored to take over for Fuji. That seems reasonable.
I think Southeast Asia could be a promising market, as the Asian Le Mans Series race at Buriram drew over 100,000 people before and still draws a great crowd. If the Asian Le Mans Series can do that then I think the World Endurance Championship will want to be there.
If the series gets tired of Bahrain there are Dubai Autodrome and Yas Marina in the United Arab Emirates or Losail International Circuit in Qatar that could host Middle East rounds.
In Europe, there are plenty of circuits. Barcelona, Hockenheim, Imola, Red Bull Ring, the aforementioned Portimão, any of those places would do.
Then there is Indianapolis, which I said above could become a home for WEC should Sebring flounder. Also, as I said above, if there is DPi/hypercar convergence, the world championship could look very different and be formatted very differently to what we have today. Daytona could count toward the world championship for all we know. Maybe Road America somehow ends up the WEC calendar.
There are a lot of circuits out there and some will end up hosting WEC this decade.
9. Super GT and DTM will continue to fool around but struggle to maintain a long-term relationship
I am really excited about the Super GT/DTM partnership and the Class One regulations. There were two combined weekends this year with a few Super GT cars going to the DTM finale at Hockenheim and then there was the non-championship event in Fuji that saw DTM cars visit Japan. It was great and it was the collision of two worlds. Everyone is happy.
But like Ben and Elaine we are at the back of the bus and coming to terms with what just happened.
I guess the goal of similar regulations is to have BMW and Mercedes-Benz compete in the GT500 class and to have Honda, Nissan and Toyota compete in DTM. Do these manufactures have enough budget to support championships efforts in both series? I don't think so.
Ok then... what about a combined championship then? That is still going to cost more money than the programs already put out.
Right... how about more combined events? You mean shipping cars to Germany for one weekend and then cars to Japan for one weekend and having the cars run almost as an exhibition and not as full-fledged championship members with something to race for? That charade will only last so long and there appears to be little to gain for the Japanese manufactures to run one car each in one DTM weekend and vice versa for the Germany manufactures with a Super GT round in Japan.
It sounds great but can it really work out? I wish it does but I think it will be hard. DTM needs manufactures and I don't think Honda, Nissan or Toyota would commit the numbers necessary to prop up DTM because it would mean taking away from Super GT and that championship means more to those three makes.
DTM has to figure out how to stay alive and attracting more manufactures might mean moving away from what Super GT wants. I think we will have a few more combined weekends but come 2022 or 2023 if there is nothing serious between the two sides I think they will both go in separate directions.
10. There will a European Le Mans Series LMP2 champion that comes from a country other than the United Kingdom, France or Russia
In the 2010s, the LMP2 championship had a French team take the title four times, a British team take the title three times and a Russian team take the title three times.
The most recent LMP2 champion not to represent those three countries was in 2009 when the Portuguese Quifel ASM Team won the championship.
I don't think that can continue into the 2020s because of the nature of the LMP2 class. There is always going to be fluctuation with some teams deciding to tackle the FIA World Endurance Championship, some amateurs becoming professionals and some amateurs deciding they have enough with LMP2 and switching to GTE or to another championship or dropping out of racing altogether.
In 2019, the top team that wasn't French, British or Russian was the American DragonSpeed in fifth. The next best was Swiss Cool Racing in seventh. Portuguese Algarve Pro Racing was in ninth, the only other entry in the top ten to come from outside those three countries.
In 2018, Spain's Racing Engineering was second in the championship but a distant second, 34.25 points off the champions Russia's G-Drive Racing.
In 2017, Untied Autosports was second in the championship running under the American flag and 12 points behind G-Drive Racing.
In 2016, American DragonSpeed was again the best of the rest in fourth.
Nothing lasts forever and I am not saying DragonSpeed will win the title but someone from a country outside of the United Kingdom, France or Russia will be the LMP2 championships in ELMS at some point over the next decade.
A decade is a long time. There could be a German surge in LMP2 racing and all of a sudden the decade ends with five consecutive German champions. The Italians might have a period of LMP2 dominance in the middle of the decade. Inter Europol Competition could move up from LMP3 and win an LMP2 title, becoming the first Polish team to have that honor. Maybe Kimi Räikkönen decides the LMP2 class in ELMS is where he wants to race and he starts a Finnish team and it wins the championship one year. Anything is possible and we are bound to see something different.
This was the first of four Predictions For the 2020s and coming up next will be predictions on the decade for Formula One. That will come next week.
Covering All Motorsports. From Indianapolis to Le Mans, Daytona to Monaco.
