While the endurance racing world still reeling from the news that Peugeot is dropping out of Le Mans, there is some good news today. At the unveiling of its Le Mans prototype cars, Toyota announced it will be fielding two challengers at the iconic 24-hour race.
And, the team said, it could run both cars as part of the FIA World Endurance Championship. Both will be running during the Six Hours of Spa in May.
“Of course we would love to win Le Mans; that is the dream for all competitors in this race. But we are realistic and we know we need to develop and to learn in order to compete with some very strong competition,” team president Yoshiaki Kinoshita said, according to multiple reports.
“Everyone involved in designing, developing and preparing the car – both at TMG and at Motor Sport Division in Japan – has worked incredibly hard to reach this point and we are all very excited to be back on the race track again.”
The TS030 Hybrid will employ a 3.4-liter V8 normally aspirated gasoline engine combined with Toyota’s hybrid system powertrain.
“The regulations for hybrid powertrains allow us to recover energy under braking and release this to improve acceleration out of a corner, delivering lap-time benefit,” said the team’s technical director, Pascal Vasselon. “For any given performance level, a hybrid powertrain will achieve this with less fuel so it is an extremely relevant technology and one we are excited to be bringing to endurance racing.
“Another key point in our development phase has been delivering aerodynamic efficiency. The development team at TMG has worked very hard to achieve an optimum aero concept using our state-of-the-art aero development processes based on combined wind tunnel testing and CFD.”
Whether Toyota can put up a real challenge to Audi is yet to be seen. But at least the team is giving itself double the chance.