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Originally Posted by dj4monie
But you're discounting the might of Toyota and Honda in terms of technology.
Diesels will not have it their own way and if the adjustments made to the rules make sense, where Prodrive/Lola and DOME were able to close the performance gap to almost nothing, big money Japanese OEM's will slam that gap shut and take it at least two notches further.
I think you'll see "Power To Pass" in both the Toyota and Acura, the technology in electric engines and high capacity caps will allow this to happen and keep weight down, at least no heavier than a modern diesel race car.
Trust me, if a couple of 40hp electronic motors can push a Lexus GS400hs up to 30mph on battery power alone, it should have NO problem pushing a car down pit road or during safety car/yellow conditions, what fuel advantage with diesel, when your not even using the IC engine to run the car???
One more venture slight off-topic -
Benz has shown a 2.4L Des-Otto turbocharged 4 cylinder gas engine that has no problem pushing a large S class Benz around, smartly.
I have a STRONG feeling Benz will push the development of this next generation gas engine with the help of motorsports and the only series/race you can showcase this kind of technology; Le Mans (ALMS/LMS)
The Genie is out of the bottle and we're about to see an era in Sportscar that finally blow that Rose colored sheen off the Group C era.
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Audi/VW have been working on HCCI engines as well for some time already. They promise best of both worlds, but so far they are quite some time away from production.
You would save some fuel by running electric only, but you wouldn't be able to roll all that much. Chevy tried using some road tech (cylinder deactivation) but it didn't work on its race car. And you wouldn't be having a full size gas engine with a hybrid, the gas engine would have to be smaller.
In racing, the hybrid would be used to boost performance, and get some extra fuel economy from running a smaller engine. If anything, you can always add some electric motors to a diesel.