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As I posted in the Toyota thread, I feel that the thing that's hurt LMP1 privateers the most over the past couple of years are huge formulae changes that are only good for 2-3 years or so, and fairly significant changes between, or even during, the race seasons. In LMP900/675 and the original (big engined) LMP1/2 classes, you had fairly stable rules for the most part and the cars were affordable. But the smaller engines in LMP1 are more expensive (trying to make a 3.4 flatcrank V8 have the longevity of a 6 or 7 liter V8 isn't cheap), and having to update cars every year due to--or to take advantage of--rules changes isn't doing the private teams any favors.
I think that the ACO and FIA would've been wise to just neck down the air restrictors on the big engined cars and keep the larger capacity engines legal. Think of it this way, when the Avro Shackleton was designed, it was a maritime patrol aircraft based on the WWII Lancaster heavy bomber, but the big difference was that the Shackleton needed longer range because of it's new role. How much of that change was obtained was the change from the Lancaster's Rolls-Royce Merlin engines to R-R's Griffon engines, which the Griffon was an enlarged Merlin (37 liters vs 27 liters). The larger Griffon produced more torque than the Merlin, and that meant more power at a lower RPM, which meant great fuel economy.
I can see the same thing happening if the ACO/FIA just grandfathered the larger engines, and I even saw a link to an article by John Judd that showed that a larger engine would be benefited under the 2014 regs anyways.
I just think that, even though the ACO/FIA meant well with the regs (smaller engines in theory are more fuel efficient), the cost of the change over to those without a factory engine deal--and the cost of said engine deals as well--was a big short term investment that was only good also for a relatively short term (a three year rules package).
Rules stability is the most important thing, and that's something that's lacking the past few years. These are similar changes to those that doomed sportscar racing in about 20 years ago (changes that required teams to spend tons of money, and benefited only the big factories). Of course, what would be nice are stable rules that benefited all. But is there really a balance between cutting edge alternative technology cars that factories like Audi and Toyota have presented, and off the shelf customer specials that can't realistically be able to compete with them on a steady basis. Ironically, LMP900/675 gave us that. Yeah, there were no diesels and hybrids back then, but you had a factory team that was being challenged by customer teams with the same car, and a team with one of the most unconventional LMP1's of all time--of course, I mean the famous Panoz LMP1 roadster, which was front engined and powered by a fuel injected aluminum version of the Ford small block NASCAR V8. If we had a formula where we can get back to that, that would IMO be a savoir. Because the irony of these supposedly "open" rules is that you see teams doing more of the same, as far as similar cars with similar engines. And the cars under the LMP900 rules were cheaper, even taking in account inflation.
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