Software development and rules stability: Prototype racing in 2030

The rising tide that has been the Drive to Survive effect has lifted more boats in motorsport than simply Formula 1’s. Sportscar racing is enjoying its own surge in popularity internationally at races like Le Mans in France, but also here in North America in IMSA’s WeatherTech Sportscar Championship. For one thing, multi-hour, multi-class racing lends itself better to the age of streaming and second screens than it did linear broadcast TV, and fans are taking advantage of that: IMSA’s audience grew by more than a third domestically and almost a quarter internationally last year.

Having some of the coolest-looking cars racing today certainly helps, whether that’s the (mostly) hybrid prototypes or the GTs, racing versions of road-going cars from Porsche, Ferrari, and others. And it definitely helps that fan access at the races is virtually unmatched, with open paddocks and grid walks that now see huge crowds get up close to the cars just before the start of each race.

“I think we’re just scratching the surface,” said IMSA President John Doonan. “I think besides the people that are here on the ground, the people watching, people engaging with us on social media, I’m seeing the passion come out more. Just on the grid walk, these fans coming up and being so excited to be here.” The series has certainly been making an effort, among other things getting local high school students exposed to the industry and starting a partnership to train more mechanics with ASE.

IMSA’s 2026 season wrapped up at the start of the month at Road Atlanta in Georgia. Although the 10-hour Petit Le Mans is now the regular finale, the race predates the WeatherTech series as well as its predecessor, the American Le Mans Series, first being held in 1998 after Elan Pharmaceuticals founder Don Panoz got a bright idea to invite the cars that raced at the French enduro to come here to the US. It worked and led to some classic races; no one who watched it could forget Allan McNish’s recovery drive in 2008, clawing back two laps after crashing on the way to the grid to hunt down and beat the Peugeots. (Don’t take my word for it, watch it for yourself.)

I wasn’t kidding about the crowd on the grid walk.

Credit: Jake Galstad/Lumen via Getty Images

2026’s running was perhaps not quite an all-time classic. As often happens, weather played its part, suppressing the crowd size and making life complicated for the teams and drivers on track. Nearly four hours was spent neutralized behind the safety car, with 16 cautions that prevented this year’s race from ever really developing a rhythm. The first half of the race was dominated by the Acuras, and the BMWs were also strong, but in the end victory went to one of the two Porsche 963s—believe it or not, the marque’s first prototype Petit Le Mans win (although in 2015 a slower GTLM Porsche 911 RSR managed to take overall victory).

This being the real world, things in sportscarland aren’t entirely easy. The war in the Middle East has disrupted both the World Endurance Championship—the series built around the 24 Hours of Le Mans—and a new Asian Le Mans series. And as always, at the top level, the sport is dependent upon manufacturer largess, something that usually vanishes in the face of worsening economic outlooks. Porsche cut its factory prototype program in half last year, parking the two cars it had campaigned in WEC and leaving just the two cars running in IMSA. Betting heavily on an EV transition that hasn’t come to pass, plus the effect of Trump’s tariffs on US-generated profits, are mostly to blame for the decision to pull back.

But Porsche is not the only one; Alpine announced earlier this year that it was retiring from the WEC at the end of this year. There were hopes that the program might be saved by Geely, the Chinese automaker that owns Lotus and Volvo. Sadly, just today it emerged that’s unlikely to happen, and two more cars will fall off the grid at the end of the year. Acura is also calling time on its GTP program in IMSA, preferring to concentrate its motorsports efforts on IndyCar. In doing so, it almost certainly means there will be no Honda presence at Le Mans in the near future, something many fans had hoped to see.

Then again, the end of those other programs does mean room on the grid for others to join. This year saw Genesis enter the WEC, and next year both Ford and McLaren are joining WEC as well. So the trajectory is positive.

One reg to rule them all?

That all three factory efforts have chosen the IMSA-written LMDh technical regulations rather than Le Mans’ own Hypercar ruleset says something. Hypercar gives OEMs greater technical freedom, including the option to have all-wheel drive hybrid systems or use bespoke batteries, whereas the LMDh rules mandate common hybrid systems and gearboxes, as well as requiring each OEM to start off with one of four approved carbon-fiber chassis.

The lack of spec components in Hypercar was definitely a factor when Ferrari chose those rules for its 499P, as well as Toyota with the GR010 (now TR010) and Peugeot with the 9X8. Aston Martin’s road-derived Valkyrie, too. But going that route is more expensive than using some common parts, and is that extra expense even worth it when the cars all have performance balanced to roughly the same lap times anyway? That process has just enough friction to it that we still haven’t seen a 499P race in IMSA despite the US being Ferrari’s largest market.

“We’re fortunate that Aston Martin saw the opportunity to come [to IMSA]. I think we absolutely 100 percent need one set of regulations. I think our vision is that LMDh by sheer vote has been the choice of the OEMs,” said Doonan. “I think rules stability is really important, and this has always been a laboratory for advancement in an authentic way, but I think the more stable that we can make the platform rules-wise is only going to help its stability and longevity,” he said.

The good news is that most of the stakeholders also agree that having two sets of regs is daft and that from 2030—when the current rulesets expire—everyone should be reading from the same sheet.

“The way to go forward is to have one category. And everybody behind the scenes… there’s a lot of talks, a lot of meetings, and they’re going exactly that way,” said Urs Kuratle, head of Porsche’s prototype program. “On the other hand, with the big success sports car racing had in the past four years, we also have great races in the WEC with the Hypercars. We have record crowds, both sides of the Atlantic. So that basically proves that concept also works. And if it was the enabler, the two different congregations or regulatories or whatever, that was the way to enable the sports car renaissance, then it was a good success. If you would ask, it would have been clever to do it with one rule set from just beginning, the answer would also be yes. But it worked,” Kuratle told me.

What does this sport look like in five years?

Credit: Brandon Badraoui/Lumen via Getty Images

It looks likely that IMSA’s approach will win the day. “We see the next set of regulations as being an evolution of LMDH, and there’s got to be a way to have everybody see the value of what has happened with LMDH. And the OEMs did by saying, “Well, geez, I could run in the top category in a pretty cost-effective manner,” Doonan said. “Without being repetitive, stability is critical in so many areas of this right now because when headwinds that we don’t control come, my hope would be that this would be… a place where automakers can come market, Michelin and Motul can come market,” Doonan said.

One reason some of us love prototype racing is that in many cases it really has improved our road cars. Direct technology transfer from the racetrack to the road is less common than it was, but still happens—Porsche’s T-hybrid engine and its electric turbocharger is directly descended from Porsche’s 919 Hybrid race car, for example.

In the future, it’s more likely that software will be the place to look to see it happening. That’s something IMSA has been accelerating, offering the vast amounts of data generated during its races to researchers and developers to work with. “Now IMSA Labs has opened up this whole new opportunity to come into this space, use the data that we generate to prove out or build out new software solutions, business solutions, AI, predictive analysis. All of those things can happen here in real time, in a controlled environment, in a regulated environment,” Doonan said.

“The OEMs have told me point-blank learnings from the hybrid system on the GTP cars, more so the strategy of how the hybrid is being implemented are immediately being utilized in product development for road cars, flat-out. And that’s been told to me by OEM representatives. We still have to allow things like that to be authentic and real in sportscar racing, in my opinion,” Doonan said.

The #6 Porsche Penske 963 finally got Stuttgart a prototype win in Atlanta.

Credit: Porsche

“It should be a technology which is also transferable to the roadcar business or for any OEM. I think that’s an important thing,” Kuratle said. “It has to be something the fans would love to see. But I make a stupid example now: whether or not you develop your own fuel pump. A fan in the grandstand doesn’t really care. So it does not matter if everybody has the same cheap pump in the cars. These are things which should be avoided in the future. But all the environmental topics have to be touched. We cannot burn shitloads of fuel on all these things,” Kuratle said.

Jonathan is the Automotive Editor at Ars Technica. He has a BSc and PhD in Pharmacology. In 2014 he decided to indulge his lifelong passion for the car by leaving the National Human Genome Research Institute and launching Ars Technica's automotive coverage. He lives in Washington, DC.