Why don’t we see the makers of the world’s fastest hypercars, Koenigsegg, Bugatti, Rimac, and Hennessey, go racing? Aston Martin is the latest manufacturer to head to Le Mans with the screaming Valkyrie AMR Pro, with Ferrari and Lamborghini joining the grid in recent years.
We asked Christian von Koenigsegg, Mate Rimac, and John Hennessey why the World’s Fastest Car Club doesn’t bother with competition.
“Too many rules in motorsport,” was the quick retort from John Hennessey. “There’s [also] a lot of politics, a lot of sandbagging and there's a lot of b******s in racing. But even with that being said, me personally, I would still like to build a car that could compete at Le Mans at some point. I think there’s still something romantic and special about Le Mans.”
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Koenigsegg solemnly agrees. “The really annoying part is ‘balance of performance.’ When I started Koenigsegg, I built the first CC8S according to the GT1 regulations with the ambition of going GT1 racing.”
“You were not allowed to be over 1,100kg and depending on your engine type, you got a certain size of restrictor to limit you to not have much more than 600 horsepower. Everything else, you could be very freely inventive about competing with technology and if you won, you were not bogged down by weight or other kind of balanced performance as long as you had your correct restriction for your engine,” continued Koenigsegg.
Mate Rimac also believes that motorsport has stopped encouraging innovation and instead now stifles it. “Racing was always like war for cars. Because in war you develop technologies in fast cycles and that’s what racing for me is about,” he reasons.
“Which motorsport today has torque vectoring, active aerodynamics, active suspension, or even stuff like active camber? None.”
“If you’re really interested in purely the human aspect, there’s pure human sports disciplines: hundreds of them. Motorsport existed to develop new technologies to compete against each other and then trickle down to the road to have some relevance. Today it doesn’t have any relevance, it’s just about the rules and it’s more of a lawyer’s game of how you get around the rules.”
John’s suggestion? “So, let's start our own racing series!” TopGear.com heartily endorses this message. Venom F5 vs Jesko Attack vs Nevera R and Chiron Pur Sport…first round at the Top Gear Test Track? Anyone?
Over to Christian von Koenigsegg for a more sensible final suggestion: “I mean there's such an opportunity I think for a new way of thinking about racing with much more freedom. You can put up boundaries which makes it not go dangerously crazy, but then a completely different level of freedom.”
Koenigsegg, Hennessey, Rimac on motorsports:
NOTE: This story first appeared on TopGear.com. Minor edits have been made.
