Perrinn sells pair of LMP1 chassis for 2018 WEC

British engineering company Perrinn announced today that it has sold a pair of LMP1 chassis to an as yet unannounced European race team, which will compete in the 2018 FIA World Endurance Championship. The sale means that Perrinn joins BR Engineering (with SMP and Dallara), Ginetta and ByKolles as provisional chassis suppliers for the 2018 season in the privateer LMP1 division, a class which features just a single car in 2017.

The car, which has completed its digital design and initial crash simulation phases, is expected to be formally revealed in November ahead of the start of its testing program a month later. The unnamed LMP1 car, will cost £1.2 million (about $1.6 million) as a rolling chassis and rely on torsion bar front suspension with coil springs over dampers at the rear. It is expected to weigh "significantly under" the mandated limit of 1,830 pounds.

The company will oversee the build of its chassis at an engineering base in Northamptonshire, UK, with designer Nicolas Perrin revealing to RACER some of the partnerships which the company is willing to share.

"The composites are going to be done by a company called ACE Technology, people we've been working with in the past," Perrin told RACER. "They are LMP and Formula 1 experts. The transmission is X-Trac. The engine I can't talk about yet, but it will be announced before Le Mans.

"The model is that we are subcontracting as much as we can in building and assembling the car. There's an engineering company in Northamptonshire that will take care of the building and assembly of the cars. Obviously though, Perrinn remains in charge of the design and management of the program."

He also confirmed to RACER that the car can house multiple types of motors, including both normally aspirated and turbo-charged examples, with the additional option of running a front-end KERS hybrid system if a customer team wishes.

For 2018 though, the first customer team – which will be announced in the coming weeks – has opted not to use a hybrid system in the car.

"The car was originally designed to house four different engines, including turbo-charged engines, it's not a problem. We are used to working with different engines.

"The team will not have a hybrid system for next year; the team would have the option to add a hybrid system to the chassis though, we have designed the car to be able to have a system at the front, but we've elected to start without one for next year. Moving forward from there we could integrate the system later."

"We have a company that's ready to put a hybrid system in the car, that's has people capable and have done it before," he continued. "It would be a traditional battery, electric system.

"We looked again this year, because the customer was asking what the benefit of the hybrid would be in the car. We looked closely and to actually make it beneficial requires more resources, they have slowed down the hybrid cars even though they are faster than any other cars. For us it would be more complicated to gain a benefit, so I think the plan is to start without a hybrid system and re-evaluate what a hybrid system would give us.

"For the moment it wouldn't give us an advantage."

Perrinn has also noted that has the capacity to build more chassis for the 2018 season, should more customers come forward. With Perrin explaining to RACER that four cars could be on the grid next year with no issues.

"We are building the equivalent of three cars with this customer, one which is for spares. We are able to produce these this year. If another customer comes along we will welcome them and could stretch the program. I'm sure we would be able to build more cars.

"We've got two cars confirmed on the grid next year, I think we could definitely manage four cars on the grid next year with no problem. This is a full-season effort, including the Prologue, and we would be able to supply four cars for that."

With the Open Source philosophy, Perrinn hopes it can speed up the development of the car, and potential attract more teams and companies to get involved.

"With Open Source it means nobody owns the intellectual property or the assets, which appeals to more people to get involved, because they feel like they can gain more," he said. "They still want leadership, which is what we will do at Perrinn, but we will allow much more freedom for people to take our car and develop their own versions, give their own ideas and make sure the resources are focused around this project."

This effectively means the car could become similar to a DPi, as a customer or manufacturer can buy the base chassis and any combination of partner components, and then develop its own version. When asked if Perrinn hopes its car can appeal to aspirant manufacturers who want to get involved in prototype racing, potentially with hybrid technology, without the LMP1 H costs, he confirmed that it would welcome it.

"Absolutely [we would welcome a manufacturer to race our car]. In the software industry it's called branching, where companies can come and take our master model and create their own branch from the project. If they have to re-homolgate the car they can do it themselves and there's a cost; it's a choice they have. The starting point though, is much easier to access with Open Source.

"We will carry on developing our own baseline for teams who don't want to develop the car themselves, which will hopefully be the spec used by most people. The version which is seen as the master version we hope will be the Perrinn one, but we will see what will happen.

"Open Source is the number one criteria for the customer team choosing our car."

Outside of the aforementioned LMP1 privateer projects for 2018, RACER understands that ex ELMS and FIA WEC LMP1 and LMP2 entrant Frenchman Benoit Morand is also actively planning an LMP1 program for 2018 but with no details yet known with regard to chassis choice.