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Oreca, with factory support, ran the old 908 to great effect last year.
This is why I'm saying that they could be running R18's next year, especially if relations between de Chaunac and Peugeot have started to cool, if not sour--if Hughes gets brassed off at drivers who ding his cars unneccesarily, imagine how much he wanted to place his foot where the sun doesn't shine on Quesnel or whoever didn't sign off on 908 spares post LM.
There could be other things to consider, like if Peugeot offered Oreca a 908, it might not have KERS, while Audi may've offered to update the 2011 cars to 2012 specs--including their alleged hybrid system.
And we also have to consider a possible different angle, too, and this is purely speculation: Penske.
He was a leading tender for an Audi Sport ALMS program this year, until Audi of America pulled the plug in the 11th hour, and he definently had the resources and money to pull off a WEC and limited (or maybe full) ALMS season to get back into the swing of sportscar racing by running R18s next year. And I can't think of a better way to knock off the rust and him getting Timo and Romain back into the Penske fold, either. This is speculaiton, of course, and so is Oreca.
And we also have to be prepared for something from far left field. I'd classify the Penske deal if it would happen to be from left field, for example. We have to also consider things that are either unfathomable at this stage, as well as something that can come from basically no where.
We'll have to wait for the photo quoted in one of those tweets to come out, but it could be engine supply, or someone's got a proven Le Mans winning ride (or maybe two) for next year. That's about all we can count on at this stage as far as likely hood: Someone's gotten some Audi or Peugeot engines on contract, or someone's gotten ahold of a customer contract for an Audi R18 or two, or something completely unexpected.
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