With a brand-new category and more hypercars, the 2024 World Endurance Championship had split success for two teams and domination by the other.
When the season began, many new cars greeted the hypercar division. At one time, two circuits were on the calendar, one at the famous Sebring track in the United States in Florida and the other at the Autodromo di Monza in Italy. The Losail circuit in Qatar replaced those two venues for the 2024 season for the season’s opening race and the week before, when the prologue took place in early March. The other venue was just up the road in Italy at the famous Imola circuit, which had just been completed for a Grand Prix race and the WEC event.
Right from the start, the first two events proved that the defending champions from Toyota Gazoo Racing would have competition from the new Penske Porsche Motorsports team. The team completed its first season the year before on a fair note. In 2024, the team proved they could win by taking the opening race in Qatar.
Then Toyota won the following two events as they fought back to take the next race in Imola via a fine performance by Kamui Kobayashi, who just edged out the Penske car driven by Kevin Estre. Belgium followed, and Toyota won again there. The next race was the 24 Hours of Lemans, which took a complete turn, as both Porsche and Toyota could not match Ferrari, which was the only great moment for the Scuderia up to that point. Toyota came around again in Brazil, but Porsche’s constant finishes were good enough to keep them in the lead in the Drivers’ and Constructors’ championships. The next race was the Circuit of the Americas, where Ferrari went on to win in a well-deserved victory.
That left two races, Japan and Bahrain, where the title would be decided. Japan was a victory for Porsche, which was a setback for Toyota. That left Bahrain, where Sebastian Buemi, Brendon Hartley, and Rio Hirakawa took the win for Toyota and beat Porsche by two points. But it was a solemn victory because Penske Porsche drivers Andre Lotterer, Laurens Vanthoor, and Estre raced well.
While the battle went on in the hypercar division, the new LMGT3 group had only one car that dominated the field, and that was the Manthey Purerxing team of Aliaksandr Malykhin, Joel Sturm, and Klaus Bachler. The team had difficulties only at Le Mans and in the last round in Bahrain (they did not finish on the podium)). But it was a success from there, showing that their Porsche was consistent throughout the year.
This season has proven that this world championship is solid, and with more manufacturers coming in soon, it will only get better.
