Classes · 4 min read · 633 words
Why was LMP2 removed from the WEC?
LMP2 was dropped from the FIA WEC's full-season entry at the end of 2023 because the grid ran out of room. Hypercar manufacturer entries nearly doubled between 2022 and 2024, LMGT3 arrived as a new customer class, and the championship chose factories and GT brands over a customer prototype class that no longer fit. LMP2 was not killed: it still races in ELMS, in IMSA, and once a year at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, where it remains an invited class.
The class that carried the championship
It is easy to forget how central LMP2 was to the WEC's survival. When Audi and then Porsche abandoned LMP1 after 2016 and 2017, customer prototypes filled the holes in the entry list. Our archive shows LMP2 supplying between 89 and 110 entries per season from 2017 through the 2019-20 super season, at a time when the top class was down to a handful of cars.
Through the first Hypercar years the pattern held. In 2022 the WEC's six-round calendar drew 98 LMP2 entries; in 2023, 92 across seven rounds. Roughly a third of every WEC grid was an Oreca 07 Gibson with a pro-am crew, and the class was routinely the closest racing on track.
What changed: the Hypercar gold rush
The problem was success elsewhere. Between 2022 and 2024 the Hypercar class went from a Toyota benefit season to the deepest factory entry in endurance racing history: Ferrari, Porsche, Cadillac, BMW, Alpine, Lamborghini and Isotta Fraschini all joined Toyota and Peugeot on the grid. At the same time the ACO and FIA replaced the old LMGTE Am class with LMGT3, bringing in nine GT manufacturers under a customer model.
A WEC round has a hard pit-lane and paddock capacity, and most circuits on the calendar cap the field around 36 to 40 cars. Three classes of that size do not fit. The championship faced a choice between a customer prototype class with no manufacturer money attached and a GT class carrying nine brands plus the commercial weight of customer racing programmes. LMP2 lost.
The numbers in our data make the cut brutally visible. LMP2 WEC entries per season: 92 in 2023, then 16 in 2024, 17 in 2025, 19 in 2026. Those last three figures are a single event each year: Le Mans.
Why Le Mans kept LMP2
The 24 Hours of Le Mans runs a 62-car grid, far beyond a normal WEC round, and the ACO fills it with invited entries from ELMS, IMSA and the Asian Le Mans Series. LMP2 is the natural filler class: cheap by prototype standards, standardized around the Oreca 07, and stocked with the pro-am crews that Le Mans has always made room for. The 2026 race carried 19 of them.
Winning LMP2 at Le Mans still matters. It is the class where silver and bronze drivers share a car with professionals and beat other crews doing the same, and it has stayed a proving ground for future Hypercar drivers even after leaving the championship proper.
Is LMP2 ever coming back?
A next-generation LMP2 ruleset has been discussed and postponed more than once, and the current cars have had their homologation extended instead. For a full-season WEC return, something would have to give: fewer Hypercar entries, bigger grids, or a calendar of circuits that can host more cars. None of those look close.
The more realistic reading is that the WEC has settled on a two-class identity, factory prototypes plus customer GTs, with LMP2 living on as the connective tissue of the wider endurance ecosystem: the class you race in ELMS to earn a Le Mans invitation, and the class that decides one of the great subplots of the 24 Hours every June.
Last updated · lmp2 · wec 2024 · hypercar era · lmgt3 · le mans · grid capacity