What Is LMDh And Why Are We So Excited About Sports Car Racing In 2023?

In 2021, there is a real buzz building in the world of sports car racing. After many years of running incompatible technical regulations, the three organizations in charge of endurance racing in the US, France, and the rest of the world have managed to find common ground. Soon, a car that can compete for the overall win at Le Mans will also be eligible to do the same at Sebring or Daytona and vice-versa.

This convergence was meant to stimulate interest and draw in new entries, and it's doing just that: Acura, Audi, BMW, Ferrari, Glickenhaus, Peugeot, and Toyota have all confirmed programs. Entries are also expected from Cadillac, Hyundai, and Lamborghini. That level of manufacturer involvement hasn't been seen since the glory days of Group C, and it's fair to say the increasing field of competitors has fans excited at the prospect.

But sports car racing—which often involves multiple classes of cars racing at the same time—is nothing if not overly complicated. The news is good but bears with us as we explain what's going on.

Prepare for acronyms: IMSA, ACO, FIA, WTF.

To start with, there are three different organizations involved in the regulations and decision-making. Here in the US, the International Motor Sports Association (IMSA) is in charge of overall sports car racing and the Weathertech SportsCar Championship, which includes specific events like the Rolex 24 at Daytona, the 12 Hours of Sebring, and the Petit Le Mans, among others.

Over in Europe, the Automobile Club de l'Ouest (ACO) is the organizer of the 24 Hours of Le Mans. And then there's the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA), which is in charge of global motorsport and world championships like the World Endurance Championship.

In the 2000s, IMSA and the ACO used very similar technical regulations. But in 2014, IMSA merged with another US series, and that new collaboration had to come up with an original rulebook to accommodate a new mix of cars. Unfortunately, what they settled on left no room for the very fastest Le Man's prototypes (called LMP1s).

Fast cars usually look good, and the 2016 Porsche 919 Hybrid (an LMP1) is no exception. Elle Cayabyab Gitlin

The Cadillac DPi-V.R race car was undefeated in 2017, though, of course, it couldn't race against certain other hypercars very easily at the time. Richard Prince for Cadillac RacingLMP1h, DPi

The mighty LMP1s continued to race at Le Mans and in the WEC, eventually evolving into some of the most technologically advanced cars ever seen. LMP1 soon turned into LMP1h—"h" for the hybrid. A complicated set of rules called the Equivalence of Performance was put in place to theoretically allow different technical approaches to compete on a level playing field. In the resulting races, we saw kinetic flywheels and supercapacitors, lithium-ion batteries, gasoline and diesel engines, and rear- or all-wheel-drive powertrains.

For a few short years, fans were treated to epic racing between Audi, Toyota, and Porsche. But the two German OEMs had Formula 1-sized budgets that became unsustainable, particularly in the aftermath of diesel gate. By 2018, only Toyota remained, competing against non-hybrid privateer LMP1 cars. The ACO tried to make things fair for the much less well-funded privateers through an ever-increasing handicap, but such regulations didn't always succeed.

Meanwhile, back in the States: in 2017, IMSA introduced its new DPi (Daytona Prototype International) category. This took the ACO's second-fastest category (LMP2) as its starting point, but where LMP2 was aimed at privateer teams and amateur drivers, DPi was for OEMs and factory teams. So, IMSA allowed DPi entrants the freedom to choose their engine and develop their electronics (both of which were spec items in LMP2). The new DPi guidelines also gave the OEMs more styling freedom so that the racing prototypes looked a little bit more like actual road cars.

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Technical regulations don't last forever, of course. IMSA, the ACO, and the FIA all knew attracting more OEMs to the top class of sports cars would ultimately require a few things. First, the rules had to allow for some form of hybridization, given almost every company's move to electrify passenger car fleets. Next, the cars should bear more resemblance to road-going cars. And finally, costs needed to become sensible.

LMH, LMDh—it's all hypercar to me

Enter the hypercar. The ACO got the ball rolling first, announcing that it wanted to attract racing versions of road-legal hypercars like the Aston Martin Valkyrie. There's something romantic about the idea of taking off a car's number plates, putting in a roll cage, and going racing (even if it's been about 50 years since such a thing was convenient).

So the ACO created a Le Mans Hypercar (LMH) category to make that happen. LMH allows entrants quite a lot of technical freedom (though less than LMP1h); the cars are heavier and less powerful than LMP1, with a lower downforce-to-drag ratio of 4:1. The first LMH cars took to the track this year, including a pair of Toyota GR010 hybrids, a pair of Glickenhaus 007 hypercars, and an Alpine LMP1 car that has been grandfathered in. As reported recently, Peugeot is set to return next year with its 9X8 hybrid, and Ferrari has confirmed it will enter LMH in 2023 with a hybrid car.

Still, IMSA had some of its requirements that meant it couldn't just adopt LMH for its top class. But DPi proved pretty successful, so in 2023, IMSA is evolving that category into a new one called LMDh. Like DPi, it starts with an OEM choosing one of four approved "spines"—the carbon fiber chassis manufactured by Dallara, Ligier, Multimatic, and Oreca. As with DPi, each OEM is free to choose its engine and electronics, and there is even more styling freedom than DPi, albeit with the same 4:1 downforce-drag ratio as LMH.

There are plenty of specified components that will be identical in each car to keep costs down. That includes the hybrid system, which combines a Bosch electric motor and Xtrac sequential gearbox and a lithium-ion traction battery from Williams Advanced Engineering. Total power output will be capped at 670 hp (500 kW) sent to the rear wheels—the electric motor is allowed to regenerate at up to 268 hp (200 kW) but can only deploy 67 hp (50 kW).

Fans of uninhibited technology development may turn their noses up at the use of spec components, and it certainly complicates any stories an OEM might want to tell about technology transfer from the race track to road cars. But the upside is the price tag—the complete hybrid system will cost around $355,000 (€300,000) and the chassis about $408,000 (€345,000). Add in the internal combustion engine cost and some other bits, and a complete LMDh car should still cost less than $1.5 million.

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That's attractive for an OEM like Audi. "The new hypercars fit perfectly with our new set-up in motorsport and our roadmap of electrification," an Audi Sports spokesperson told Ars by email. "The regulations for LMDh cars, in particular, allow us to field fascinating race cars in prestigious races worldwide while regulations are trimmed for maximum cost efficiency." (Audi and Porsche are working together on an LMDh program using the same engine and Multimatic chassis but with different styling, which may also result in a Lamborghini version in 2024.)

The fact that the LMDh is allowed in US championships also factored into some OEM decisions. (BMW is believed to have selected Dallara as its chassis-maker.) "We know what engine we're going to put [in], we know what constructor we're going to work with, and then the program is in the first place centered around the IMSA championship because we want to have this for our biggest market, which is the US," said BMW Motorsport boss Mike Wrack.

When asked, Wrack didn't see much wrong with the use of spec components. "You see it also in Formula E: there are many specs, but there are also some open areas. And we learned a lot there," he said. "So yes, there is a lot of specs, but I think the spec is the only way to keep costs under control. And with hypercar [LMH], there is an element of additional cost, which in current times, it's tough to get through [the board of directors]. So, for us, the LMDh was a preferred direction, not only because of cost efficiency but also because of the US market."

 Enlarge / Peugeot is returning to Le Mans for the first time in over a decade with a new hybrid prototype called the 9X8, an LMH in this article's parlance. Peugeot Sport Convergence

"We ought to have an opportunity for everybody to race together," IMSA President John Doonan told me about all this. "The key—and it may sound simple, but it's quite complicated—is finding a technical solution for that to happen."

According to Doonan, work on this kind of universal set of parameters was happening in parallel. When FIA and ACO put out a set of rules for hypercars, he said IMSA had already been working on a similar initiative (it was "basically DPI 2.0, which was more styling, integrating the hybrid, keeping cost-effective," Doonan said).

"And I think, as it got closer, [the ACO] couldn't wait any longer. They announced hypercar [LMH], we then announced LMDh," he continued. "In the meantime, I think all of us said, 'You know we ought to be able to talk more about bringing it all together. Manufacturers have asked for it.' So that's what we delivered in LMDh. Now we're at a juncture where some folks are down the path. We got plenty of people committed here; let's find a way to see the cars race together."

That technical skeleton making this cross-series racing possible is called convergence, and it sets targets in four different areas to let LMH and LMDh cars play together nicely. The four key components are tire sizes, acceleration profile, braking capability, and aerodynamics.

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The ACO already had some thoughts about tire sizes since its LMH category allows for RWD and AWD cars (AWD cars have the smallest tires at 31 inches front and rear, with RWD LMH cars using 29-inch front tires and 34-inch rear tires). IMSA and the ACO have decided to apply that same approach. Since LMDh is RWD, LMDh cars will use the 29-inch front/34-inch rear tires.

Once more: A glossary of acronyms

IMSA is the International Motor Sports Association, in charge of US motorsport

ACO is the Automobile Club de l'Ouest (ACO) organizers of the 24 Hours of Le Mans

FIA is the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile, which is in charge of global motorsport and world championships like the World Endurance Championship

LMP1 refers to Le Man's prototype cars raced in ACO/FIA events before the new car standard was implemented this year

DPi refers to Daytona Prototype International cars currently raced in IMSA events (but soon evolving)

LMH covers Le Man's hypercars, the ACO/FIA solution (following LMP1) to leveling the financial playing field and generating cars more akin to road-legal vehicles. These arrive this year

..

MD refers to Le Mans/Daytona hypercars, the evolution of DPi. These arrive in 2023 and should be compatible with LMH cars, meaning fans will finally see vehicles that race across IMSA, ACO, and FIA competitions prevent the AWD hybrid LMH cars from having a huge acceleration advantage, the race organizers will restrict the electric motors from deploying energy below a certain speed, most likely 75 mph (120 km/h) in the wet and 100 mph (160 km/h) in the dry. Like tire size, this is a balance of performance tactics that the ACO and FIA have already started using in WEC.

Both kinds of cars will have the same coasting performance, with specified levels of front and rear torque splits for the AWD machinery. About braking, the front differentials of AWD LMH cars will have a zero-lock mechanism to prevent them from gaining advantage under deceleration. And LMDh cars will have control software to prevent the electric motor from functioning as a traction control device.

TEveryLMH car will be benchmarked in a wind tunnel owned by the Swiss F1 team Sauber. to balance aerodynamics, every LMDh car will be similarly benchmarked at the Windshear tunnel in North Carolina. If an LMH team wants to enter IMSA races, they have to put their car through Windshear; vice-versa for LMDh teams who want to race at Le Mans or WEC.

Finally, both IMSA and the ACO and FIA will implement their series-specific balance of performance (as they currently do) to keep things equal among competitors. This means that a Porsche LMDh car that races in WEC might do so slightly differently than a Porsche LMDh car racing in IMSA.

Can an LMDh win Le Mans? Can an LMH win Sebring?

The biggest remaining question is one we will have to wait until 2023 to answer. Specifically, will IMSA allow LMH cars to come to the US and win its marquee races, and will the ACO let LMDh cars win at Le Mans? It's natural to expect each series to favor its full-time entrants, and earlier this year, Glickenhaus boldly told Motor Sport that such a thing would be impossible. But Glickenhaus made those statements in February. When I asked the same question of teams at the beginning of July, I got a very different answer.

"We need to trust IMSA and the ACO. A lot of work has been done already, long before we have now entered. It will be good for all if it's possible, and I think they will make it possible," BMW's Wrack told me.

"Yes, being able to fight for overall victories and championship titles at the Le Mans 24 Hours, at the Daytona 24 Hours, in the World Endurance Championship (WEC) and the IMSA series was key for our decision," said Audi via email.

Similarly, Wayne Taylor, who will run one of the two Acura LMDh cars, told Motor Sport that "if I thought we would have no chance at winning, I would not be doing it," regarding LMDh cars having a chance of winning Le Mans. (Acura head of R&D Jon Ikeda was similarly confident when I spoke to him.)

The first real test for that will happen at the end of January 2023 for that year's Rolex 24 at Daytona, the first race for LMDh... And also the first IMSA race open to the LMH teams. A year and a half is a long time (nearly long enough to square all these acronyms and standards in a racing fan's mind), and things can still evolve, but I can't wait.

Palatov Has A Radical Take On Building Sports Cars—and EV Batteries

Photo credit: Palatov

• Palatov is working on a new sports car called the D8, with a ton of body shell and powertrain flexibility.
• It can accommodate a V8 like the GM LT4, but most will be electric.
• A new Palatov company called Modular Battery Technologies has big plans for EVs.

Dennis Palatov is exactly the kind of mad scientist you want working on building better sports cars. I like all mad scientists; he will take over the Earth; the Earth will need more twisty mountain roads.

Palatov is an electrical engineer by training but has spent the last 13 years making very cool, very compact race cars that have competed at Pikes Peak, Bonneville, and countless track days are driven by their giddy and (understandably) very enthusiastic owners. Now he is building a new and very promising two-seat sports car called the D8. Because the D8 has the same 95-inch wheelbase as the original GT40, the D8 can accommodate a GT40 body, one of which he has in the shop in replica form. Like some of his earlier creations, the D8 can also come powered by a GM LT1 or LT4 V8 because just as someone is always going to want a GT40 body, someone will want a small block. The car can also accommodate Palatov’s own-design aerodynamically efficient body powered by his design of modular electric battery packs.

We’ll take one of each, please.

Photo credit: Drakan Motor Cars

I got to drive several of Palatov’s earlier works, from the D4 to the Drakan, and man-oh-man if I had the $80,000 to $100,000 they cost I would stock a garage with them and build a track to race them on. All of them that I’ve driven provide a directness of feel through the wheel and the seat of the Pantalones, along with a perfect power balance, that nothing else in the world matches, from the Ariel Atom to the BAC Mono to the original Lotus Elise and Alfa Romeo 4C. Pick a crazy accurate sports car, and the Palatov will likely out-track it.

So his next entry in the Pantheon of Palatov is this D8. So far, he has mocked up a chassis and is experimenting with different drivetrains.

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“I’m pretty excited about the car, of course,” Palatov said yesterday by phone from his Portland, Oregon, shop. “It’ll be primarily electric. We’ll have gas engines, LT1 and LT4 for those who want them, but primarily I’m designing it as an electric with Cascadia drivetrains.”

Work on the new car is going well.

Photo credit: Palatov

“It’s in the final design stages,” Palatov said. “I’m doing CFD (computational fluid dynamics), I’m doing the chassis design. And I’m doing the bodywork and the styling as well. We expect to have the first rolling, drivable chassis somewhere around the very end of the year. The bodywork will probably be ready by spring because we have to make the molds.”

The car is an evolution of the D1, D2, and D4, previous Palatov cars that have raced at all those mentioned above. But if you took at the red car in the computer drawings, it looked like an Acura NSX. Maybe you see something else in it.

Photo credit: Palatov

“It’s not obvious from the pictures, but it’s a fairly compact car. It’s only a 95-inch wheelbase, and it’s 145 inches long, which is nine inches shorter than a Miata.”

He is completely certain about it fitting the rear-mid-mounted V8 drivetrain, likely with a Porsche G96 manual transaxle because his earlier cars could fit that configuration. Suspension, as you can see in the drawings, is a double-wishbone pushrod setup.

Whether you can register it for the street is up to the laws in your state.

“It’s a little beyond the capabilities of our company to fully register it. But we’ll see. And that’s another reason for doing it as a replica because we could potentially register it as a replica or under (the new) low-volume (manufacturer law). Most states have ways of registering custom-built vehicles. And of course, with the electric drive train, it’s automatically emissions compliant.”

The electric drivetrain. Yes, that may be the bigger news here. Palatov has big plans for an electric future.

“We’re launching another company in parallel, which is called Modular Battery Technologies. We’re looking to transform the way EV batteries are made. We’re looking to make them a commodity. And we’ve come up with some specific technologies that are patent pending right now that make it possible.”

Photo credit: Palatov

Palatov’s battery plan is to offer full-voltage modules, which is very different from how modules are done right now, he says. Now, modules are low-voltage, and you stack them vertically. In his model, they’re full voltage, so you can put them in parallel, as many as you need.

“That lets you right-size the battery for the actual use because a lot of people who are buying 400-mile Teslas are only actually driving 40-mile commutes. They’re hogging the resource. And they’re dragging 600 pounds of battery that they don’t need on every trip.”

Right now, EVs are only 2% of the market, but legislators and carmakers are pushing for 100% 10 or 15 years from now. That’ll be a lot of EVs and a lot of batteries. Palatov hopes to address the recycling issue, too.

Photo credit: Palatov

“That’s another patent application that I’ve come up with. And it’s tracking the modules through blockchains. All the transactions, when they’re authorized to work in a car, when they’re sold, bought, and eventually recycled, we’re going to run the exchanges for tracking all of that. We’ll just take a very small fee of the transactions, essentially kind of like credit cards or an account convenience fee. But the standard itself will be royalty-free to everybody who uses it with the catch that they participate in the whole ecosystem.”

Palatov thinks his modules will offer other advantages.

“The modules have a lot of interesting features like they have relays on both terminals. So when the module is off, it’s completely inert, even though it’s an uninvolved module. It’s completely safe to touch or transport. They’re individually trackable, too, so if one gets stolen, it gets turned off. It won’t work in any other car other than what it’s authorized to work in.”

You could also, say, just have 30 kilowatt-hours of battery most of the time, and then if you want to go on a longer trip, you could add more.

“It’s possible to swap the charge with those because each module is about 40 pounds. You could do it by hand. But the idea is that you fill as many sockets as you need in your car for your daily use, and then, let’s say you go on a road trip, you go to a service station that has a bunch of these standard modules sitting around, and you just lease some more. They put them in for you or you can do it yourself. And then when you’re done, you just return them.”

There are still more advantages, like if one module fails, out of 10, in a normal battery pack you would lose 10% of your pack, but in this setup, the other 90% is still perfectly functional and running.

Palatov’s larger idea is to make this technology free to any carmaker or battery builder that wants it.

“We’re looking to make it an open standard and license it to everybody.”

It’ll be open-source and also open chemistry.

“It can be anything; we’re agnostic to the cell type because the technology is more about the packaging and the communications and the tracking and the fact that they have relays and the cells are connected in series only.”

Photo credit: Palatov

Here’s the part where he wants to change the world.

“Anybody who makes batteries now can do these modules; the processes are all the same. So it will cost considerably less to make them because of the volume, the manufacturing scale, because you are just making a lot of the same thing and it opens up a lot of markets for module manufacturers.”

And the first place that we will see all this is in the coming D8?

“It can be anywhere, but you know, there’s a lot of chicken and eggs in this. You’d have to have the modules built before anybody designs them in, you have to have a car to design them into before modules can be usefully built, and I’m in the unique position where I can solve all the chickens and eggs. So the D8, the D9, and the D47 will use these modules. And I’m designing those in parallel. And then I’m doing the modules in parallel. It’s just to prove to the world that this stuff works and how it works.”

Photo credit: Palatov

And like every other manufacturer before him, Palatov wants to show this to the world through racing because win on Sunday sells on Monday. And because racing’s fun and it’s part of what the company does.

“For racing, they have interesting advantages because you can right-size the battery for each run. For example, at Pikes Peak when we ran in 2019, we ran electric cars and they had 700 pounds too much battery because they were also a size for Bonneville the following month. As a result, we didn’t do nearly as well as we could have. But here, I’m hoping to run Pikes Peak in 2022 with this. And we’ll be able to dial in exactly the size of the battery, not too much, not too little, for the run. That would make the most sense. And it also enables pure, easy endurance racing, because now each module can be handled by a single crew member, without any weird robots or anything like that. And it’s about 10, 15 seconds to swap it, and so one crew member on each side and you’re swapping 10 modules, you know, it’s under a minute pit stop.

Did he say endurance racing? Like Le Mans?

“My ultimate dream, I don’t know if I can pull it off, but I have to have ambitions, is, I want to do Garage 56 at Le Mans in ‘23 with it (Garage 56 is reserved for experimental entries; Dan Gurney ran his Delta Wing there and this year two racers are sharing a hand-controlled car). So we’ll see if I get enough people interested and I get some money behind me now. I might be able to pull it off.”

He might be able to pull it all off. Bonne chance!

Photo credit: Hearst Owned

Powerlifter Dies After Crashing Into Boulder, SUVs — Sports Car Overturns On Manhattan’s Henry Hudson Parkway

A powerlifter is known as the “Black Tom Cruise” has died nearly two weeks after he lost control of his sports car and overturned on Manhattan’s Henry Hudson Parkway, crashing into two SUVs and a boulder, cops said Thursday.

Otis Perkins, 39, was speeding south on the parkway when he lost control of his Dodge Viper convertible near the Dyckman St. Exit ramp in Inwood just before 3 p.M. on July 11, cops and friends said.

The muscular motorist clipped a Subaru Crosstrek heading in the same direction and hen veered onto the shoulder, where officials said e mounted a jersey barrier and struck a protruding boulder,

The sports car flipped onto its top after hitting the rock, landing back on the parkway where it struck a Chevrolet Equinox before finally skidding to a stop, cops said.

First responders found Perkins inside the overturned car with serious injuries to his head and body.

Medics rushed the victim to Mount Sinai Morningside, where he died Saturday. Officials said that the 31-year-old man driving the Crosstrek and the 57-year-old man operating the Equinox were not injured.

The top of the convertible was down, leaving Perkins with serious injuries to his back and right eye, according to barbend.Com.

According to an online fundraiser, Perkins was expected to survive the crash but died of complications at the hospital. He lived in East Flatbush, Brooklyn, cops said.

“He had sustained major injuries due to a car accident on 7/11, but due to a high fever and lung complications from pneumonia, he couldn’t get enough oxygen to his lungs, and his heart gave out,” wrote Lynn Wilson, who organized the GoFundMe page. “Our collective hearts are broken.”

The GoFundMe page for Perkins’ medical care raised $42,000 before his death. Friends said Perkins lived with his elderly mother.

Perkins was well-liked in the powerlifting community and was a training partner to Larry “Wheels” Williams, who announced his buddy’s death on his Instagram page.

“The man brought laughs everywhere he went. Funniest man I ever met,” Williams wrote. “I love him and hold him closer to almost anyone I know. It hurts to accept he’s gone.

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“No matter what life threw at him, he kept a smile, and his head held high,” Williams added. “Otis Perkins, you will be missed.”

Friend Jen Marie, 25, said Perkins often helped her with her workouts.

“We first met in 2019. He took me to one of his gyms,” Marie said. “He was super knowledgeable about lifting and working out. He helped me with my workouts and supplements. He was a very outgoing person who cared a lot about his friends.

“I am a nurse, and throughout the pandemic, he would check in on me asking how I was doing,” Marie said. “He shared his knowledge of working out and just wanted to help others get better and learn more.”

Susy Oluvele, 26, said she missed the chance to get to know him better.

She said she met Perkins three weeks ago at a Nigerian club, and they exchanged information.

“He told me about his workout and everything. It was a cool interaction,” Oluvele said. “It was just crazy when I then saw my friend post something about his passing. How can you just meet someone right before they pass away?”