SRC: GT3h

Hello everybody, and welcome back to another edition of Steve’s Racing Concepts!

There has been a lot of hype surrounding the current top tier sportscars; the Hypercar/LMDh classes in WEC and IMSA. One of the reasons for this, is that most are running hybrid machinery, and this has been that way for over a decade now (The first being the Panoz Esperante GTR-1 “Sparky” in 1998.

Although the Panoz was a failure, a little over decade later, Porsche picked up where they left off and decided to give it another shake. This time, better executed and thought out, and kick started the modern era of hybrid race cars with better results than the former.

Back in 2010 & 2011, Porsche trialled a GT3 911 with flywheel-battery (less weight than chemical batteries) powered electric motors on the front axle, with help from Williams Technologies. This ran for two years as a demonstration car around the Nurburgring VLN championship in the SPX class (non-homologated GT3’s) and a one-off IMSA appearance as an unclassified entry before being retired.

Fast forward to today, and it seems like industry is turning the page. Aston Martin, Ferrari, Lamborghini, McLaren and Porsche have all come out with hybrid road-going supercars, and some even already have fully-electric vehicles or have some coming down the pipeline. While all these manufacturers are entered in hypercar/GTP, I think it’s inevitable that other manufacturers will come knocking for change.

Obviously this has not yet taken off in GT’s racing and not a single GT3 car today has a hybrid powertrain, but what if the SRO finally decided to do it? How would it look like? That is what today’s post is going to theorize.

The beautiful thing about adding a hybrid powertrain, is that the units are small enough, you can shoehorn them into an existing platform without a major hack-up. You don’t need a large battery either, so you can keep the weight down enough it won’t change the driving characteristics too much.

I would think fitting a spec capacitor battery with about ~2kwh of capacity should be fine, with a motor outputting roughly 50hp (~38kW). They could approach this like the LMDH formula and make everything spec, or allow manufacturers to come up with it themselves. For reference, the LMDH formula has a 1.35kwh battery and the motor peak output is 50kw.

To make sure the performance is relative to the existing GT3 cars, they should have it so the total power output between the ICE and electric motor should always equal the same whether the electric power is running or not. The only difference should effectively be fuel consumption. This system is used in today’s Hypercar/LMDH, and the class is widely popular at the present (which you can read my latest blog post about that here:)

Cars like the Mercedes and Aston Martin and Lamborghini could benefit from the hybrid to help reign in those thirsty engines. Cutting the capacity of the fuel tank will help bring a lot of weight out at full fuel load.

The car will likely be a smidge heavier at low fuel loads, but it should help the weight at the beginning of the stints. Not to mention 4WD should help those FR layout cars in low traction conditions to bring them closer to the MR and RR cars.

Those reading this and being somewhat skeptical, I will give a more recent example of this working. In the Japanese SuperGT series, there is a team that have been running hybrid GT300 cars for nearly a decade now. They ran 2 spec Toyota Priuses, one using a detuned Toyota TS0X0 powertrain, and the other using souped up road-going Toyota & Prius parts. Currently they are running a Lexus LC500h.

These cars have been competitive over the years, although not winning the championship, they have secured multiple wins over the years. Which proves that with the right BoP, they can fit right into the current mix of GT3 machinery.

I truly believe this is going to happen; it’s not a matter of if, but when. Perhaps at the next generation of GT3 rules they will allow this. I don’t think the SRO can afford to get left behind by the ACO with them coming out with not only hybrid, but hydrogen powered cars by end of the decade.

The formula is there for the taking, somebody just needs to be able to do it on the cheap and simple enough for amateur/small teams to get a grip on.

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