Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus (SCG, a.k.a Glickenhaus Racing) has raced the Glickenhaus 007 LMH for three years in the Hypercar class in WEC, starting from the second race of the current regulations. They have done 12 races with one car and 4 with two cars- always at Le Mans and once at Monza 2021, finishing with at least one car all but two of those races.

Few days ago SCG announced that they will not compete in WEC in 2024. We take a look back, through the data, at how they compared to the rest of the Hypercar field over those twelve races. The data for this analysis is provided by FIA WEC and Al Kamel Systems.

The top panel of Figure 1 shows the fastest lap done by any SCG car expressed as a percentage of the fastest lap done by any Hypercar, thus higher numbers indicate slower lap time. Except for their first race, over the first two years they were consistently within 1% of the fastest car in the class. In the beginning of 2023, however, with the influx of many new cars they suddenly found themselves a good 3.5% off the pace. Over the next five races, they progressively got closer to the top and manage to bring that deficit to less than 1%. A great example of a solid in-season development program and a professional team at work.

The middle panel shows how close to the absolute fastest hypercar lap they managed to stay within the race. This is expressed as their median race lap time, excluding all non-green flag, rain affected, and pit-in and pit-out laps. For comparison, the white symbols show how close, on average, the remaining Hypercar field was to the same fastest lap. We see again that they did not performed worse than the rest of the class, except in the beginning of 2023, but they did not stay behind for long.

It’s worth pointing at how similar the traces of SCG and the rest of the Hypercars are. This indicates that this parameter, how close the race pace is to the ultimate pace, is mostly dictated by external factors, likely track layout and conditions. This will be analysed in detail in a future article.

The bottom panel of Figure 1 shows the finishing position of the highest finishing SCG car. Note that this is the position at which they crossed the finish line. Post-race penalties altering the finishing order are not taken into account. Shown is also how high their car was ranked according to ultimate, one lap pace. Comparison between the two traces shows how close they came to maximising their potential. Finishing lower than expected from their raw pace reflects sub-optimal management of the race either through strategy or reliability. The thin horizontal lines show the number of entries in the Hypercar class, i.e. the lowest position that any car can finish on. Monza 2022 and Sebring 2023 are the two races that no SCG car managed to complete. This panel shows that SCG always manage to finish at least as high as their one lap pace would suggest. It is true that Glickenhaus 007 LMH was often one of the slowest cars, meaning that they can only move forward. But notice the progress they had in 2023. They finished all races higher than expected by at least two positions. At the centenary edition of Le Mans they finished 8 positions higher than expected.

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