Of all the automakers with racing programs, Toyota’s is undoubtedly one of the most extensive. Just take a look at the plans it’s announced for this year.
The Japanese giant has top-flight racing teams dispatched for the World Endurance Championship, World Rally Championship, the Dakar Rally and NASCAR. And those are just the top series in which it will compete this year.
It’ll also take part in the Nürburgring 24-Hour race, Japan’s Super GT series and Super Formula championship and the Japanese Rally Championship. It has customer teams in GT3, and more local, national, and regional racing disciplines than we could shake a stick at – not to mention several of its own spec racing series.
The undoubted crown jewel in Toyota’s racing activities, though, has to be the TS050 Hybrid that it will field once again in the WEC and its headline 24 Hours of Le Mans race.
Shown here for the first time, the LMP1 prototype has been updated for the season ahead. This year marks the first “super season,” extending from Spa this May to Le Mans in June 2019 and encompassing eight grueling rounds around the world along the way.
Developed by Toyota Motorsport GmbH in Germany with a hybrid powertrain by the Higashifuji Technical Center in Japan, the updated TS050 is the car that Fernando Alonso will drive for his first foray into the series. He’ll be joined by seasoned veterans Sébastien Buemi and Kazuki Nakajima, with a second car shared by Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi and José María López.
With Audi, Porsche, Nissan, and Peugeot all dropping out of the class in recent years, Toyota is the last big manufacturer left standing in the LMP1 Hybrid category. It’ll still face challenges from privateer-entered, conventionally powered prototypes, but as early as it may be to make predictions at this point, Toyota stands more than a strong chance of (finally!) winning at Le Mans and clinching the overall championship.
That’s if everything goes according to plan, but at Le Mans you can never be sure about anything, so we guess that, even with the major opposition gone, Toyota’s people will be keeping their fingers crossed…
