Toyota issued a release detailing their plan to run two of their hybrid contenders in the Le Mans for the first time in more than a decade. Further details about the factory program were also revealed, including confirmation of a two-car attack at the 24 Hours of Le Mans and its debut at the Six Hours of Spa FIA World Endurance Championship race in May.
The all-new LMP1 contender, built at Toyota Motorsport GmbH in Cologne, Germany, has been named the Toyota TS030 Hybrid.
It will sport a 3.4-liter normally-aspirated V8, coupled with a capacitor instead of batteries, which can store energy by recovering the car braking system. Essentially, this means that the hybrid will store energy while slowing down and use it to boost a significant acceleration while returning to the speed.
"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,” said team president Yoshiaki Kinoshita.
“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.”
The decision hasn’t been made about who will man the second car, but we do know that the first car’s team includes 2009 24 Hours of Le Mans winner Alex Wurz, last year’s 12 Hour of Sebring winner Nicolas Lapierre and former F1 driver Kazuki Nakajima.
