ACO Introduces "2 Percent" Rule for Le Mans Series

Usually when you start a championship (as an organizer, that is), you hand over a clear and definitive technical rulebook to all the teams in order for them to set up a competitive operation for the season in question. From 2011 onwards however, that won't apply to the Le Mans Cup, Le Mans Series and American Le Mans Series.

And that's because Le Mans organiser the Automobile Club de l'Ouest (ACO) confirmed earlier today the regulations for the 2011 campaign. Those regulations contain a certain article – 19 – that practically allows the ACO to make all the necessary adjustments to the technical rules during the course of the season in order to keep a balanced championship.

What that means is that no team will be able to dominate the championship from beginning to end, as the ACO will introduce the “two percent” rule.

“Performance adjustment through the application of article 19 [the ACO reserves itself the possibility of balancing performances between the different engines and technologies] as well as the two percent rule,” said the 2011 rulebook.

“This means keeping the lap times of the quickest cars in each technology within a range of two per cent in relation to the quickest car, all technologies combined, through decisions taken by the ACO,” further added the article, introduced to scrap the existent gap between the highly-successful diesel technology and the petrol-powered racers.

Another new rule introduced by the ACO for next season refers to the LMP2 category, where each car has to be driven by at least one gentleman driver next year. Furthermore, the former GT1 and GT2 classes will unite to form the GTE class, which in turn will be divided into GTE Am (Amateurs) and GTE Pro (Professional). The latter series will also fall under performance balancing rules.