,
The Ecoboost engine is not quite as stock as the BMW engine as you can see it’s sporting tubular race headers with Garrett Motorsports turbos hanging off of them. The engine in the street car will probably be rated around 650hp or so. As for the race car? I’m guessing around 500hp so as to be on par with the Corvette and Porsche. While the Ford GT had issues during the 24 Hours of Daytona, it did show the speed to match the other cars in class. Picture from RK Motors Charlotte.
Perhaps a bit under the radar was Ferrari bringing their 488 to Daytona. Picture from Risi Competizione.
Ferrari also unsettled the automotive establishment by going turbo in their mainstream supercar causing all the so-called naturally aspirated purists to go into convulsing seizures. Picture from Ferrari.
As the Ferrari engine uses a flat-plane crank, it is essentially like two inline-4s sharing a crankshaft. Therefore, a twin-scroll turbo can be used on each bank of the engine. This is in contrast to the BMW V8 which requires each turbo to get exhaust from each bank of the engine in order for the twin-scroll design to be most effective. Picture from Ferrari.
Just how much of the street engine is in the race engine? Well, I can tell you one thing, those intercoolers ain’t stock! It also appears the race engine has custom intake manifolds on it. ‘d guess this engine is also around 500hp. The BMW is allowed the higher horsepower limit because it’s a heavier car compared to all the others. Back to the intercoolers seen here, one of those would probably be good enough for a 500hp street car, but Ferrari is trying to squeeze every single bit of system efficiency out that they can by cooling the air as much as possible long with having minimum pressure drop.So there you have it, the field of engines competing against each other in the GTLM class. There’s an NA V8, a pair of turbo V8s, a NA flat-6, and a twin-turbo V6. So far at the first race of the season at Daytona, all of the cars showed comparable speed. The next big test is Sebring followed by the granddaddy of them all at Le Mans. So far, the tried and true naturally aspirated cars have come out on top. But how long until the new kids on the block surpass them? I expect to see some major progress from the three new cars at Le Mans.
