MOTORSPORT: No-go on new Ford-Ferrari battle

A movie about the epic tussles between Ford and Ferrari in 1960s sports car racing is in the offing for next year, but the chances of those marques battling each other again for outright honours at the 24 Hours of Le Mans look shot.

Guidelines announced during this year’s Le Mans in June for hypercar-inspired hybrid prototypes in the World Endurance Championship from 2020 raised the prospect of reigniting the great Ford-Ferrari rivalry.

However, the two makes are no longer attending the meetings convened by the world governing Federation Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) and Le Mans and WEC organiser l’Automobile Club de l’Ouest (ACO) to detail the regulations, according to editor-in-chief of Sportscar365, John Dagys.

Nor is Porsche, the most successful manufacturer in Le Mans history but which quit the WEC at the end of last season, Dagys has reported.

When the hypercar proposal was unveiled in June it was said that it was intended to slash the cost of manufacturers participating in sports car racing to $A40-48 million a year – about a quarter of what the hybrids of recent years have cost.

Only Toyota remains racing these super-expensive hybrids after the withdrawal of Audi and then Porsche, allowing the Japanese manufacturer to finally claim a Le Mans victory this year.

Dagys says that Toyota and Aston Martin are the only original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) still involved in the technical working group on the regulations for 2020, while McLaren has been represented by an employee from McLaren Applied Technologies.

Ford returned to Le Mans in 2016 with its modern GT and immediately won its class, but the stumbling block to a Blue Oval comeback in top-tier sports car racing is that it wants uniform rules that would allow it to compete in both the WEC and the International Motor Sports Association (IMSA) series in America.

“Our principles are that it’s got to be global, meaning the same set of rules exist in WEC and IMSA, it’s got to be affordable and it’s got to be relevant,” Ford Performance global motorsports director Mark Rushbrook told Sportscar365.

Ferrari’s disenchantment appears to stem from the ACO’s balance of performance adjustments for this year’s Le Mans which left its 488 GTEs languishing in the GTE-Pro class.

In this age Ferrari also would want uniform rules to allow it to race the same cars on either side of the Atlantic Ocean, which would give it enormous wedge as an alternative to Formula 1 in any sticky negotiations with F1’s new American owners, Liberty Media.

IMSA president Scott Atherton has said that his organisation is committed to discussions with ACO and the FIA about uniform rules, but clearly even the greatly-reduced forecast cost of hypercar hybrids is still too steep for the Americans to contemplate.

Cadillac, Acura (Honda), Nissan and Mazda run much cheaper cars called Daytona prototypes in IMSA and may have been interested in Le Mans and even the broader WEC if the price was right.

Further talks on regulations are scheduled this month – as is the first WEC round since Le Mans, at Britain’s Silverstone this weekend with 10 world champion drivers competing (including Fernando Alonso and Jenson Button) as well as Australia’s class winner at this year’s Le Mans, Matt Campbell, in a Porsche 911 RSR.

The final regulations for 2020 and beyond are due to be presented to the FIA World Motor Sport Council for approval in early December.

Meanwhile, 20th Century Fox has scheduled its as-year-unnamed Ford-versus-Ferrari movie, with Oscar winner Matt Damon playing Carroll Shelby, for launch at the end of next June.

US giant Ford had tried to buy boutique Italian manufacturer Ferrari in the 1960s but when a deal fell through at the last minute it triggered a maniacal desire in Henry Ford II to topple Ferrari’s dominance at Le Mans and he assembled a team led by the visionary Shelby.

The mighty Ford GT40 won the French classic four years in a row from 1966 in its various guises.

Seven-time Supercars champion Jamie Whincup’s international ambitions have been on hold for a long time, but he’ll branch out next month to drive in a round of IMSA’s American championship.

Whincup will share expatriate Queenslander Kenny Habul’s Mercedes-AMG GT3 in the GT Daytona class of a two-hour, 40-minute race at the Laguna Seca circuit in California on the second weekend of September .

He is squeezing it in between a Triple Eight test day at Queensland Raceway and the first Supercar endurance round, the Sandown 500 on September 16.

Whincup, Habul, Italian Raffaele Marciello and Frenchman Tristan Vautier drove a Mercedes-AMG GT3 to second place behind an Audi R8 LMS in February’s Bathurst 12-Hour.

While Whincup has raced at Supercar events overseas, his only true international experience outside Australia has been the Race of Champions in 2012 and ’14 and he says he is not chasing other drives.

Ford Supercar rival Chaz Mostert had already been booked to drive for BMW Motorsport in the final round of the IMSA championship – the Petit Le Mans at Road Atlanta, Georgia, in October – between the Bathurst 1000 and Gold Coast 600.