The Japanese producer has revealed that it may take a leaf out of arch-rival Ferrari’s guide and run a 3rd automotive on a satellite tv for pc foundation sooner or later.
However Toyota WEC race director Rob Leupen has revealed that it’s already too late to place such a plan into place for subsequent season and that an additional full-season entry within the Hypercar class couldn’t come on stream earlier than 2026.
“We see what Ferrari is doing with its buyer or satellite tv for pc automotive, and we like that,” Leupen instructed Autosport.
“Clearly working an additional automotive offers you extra potentialities, so it’s one thing we’re wanting into. We’re reviewing it.”
The lead-time concerned in constructing an extra automotive and organising the infrastructure to run it will make it unimaginable for a 3rd GR010 to reach within the WEC in 2025, defined Leupen.
“If we had been going to do it subsequent 12 months, we might have needed to have made the choice already, and for the time being nothing is set,” he stated.
#7 Toyota Gazoo Racing Toyota GR010 – Hybrid: Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi, Nyck de Vries
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“It can’t be a short-term determination as a result of we all know what the lead occasions for all of the parts could be within the present circumstances.”
Toyota favours going the Ferrari route: the manufacturing facility AF Corse staff runs the extra 499P LMH for this 12 months pushed by Robert Kubica and works drivers Yifei Ye and Robert Shwartzman on a buyer foundation.
“We’re not on the stage but the place we are saying that is how we wish to do it, however in case you ask me, the best way Ferrari does it, I like that,” stated Leupen.
He pressured that the complexities of working a four-wheel-drive LMH would mitigate towards the route Porsche has taken by promoting its 963 LMDh to privateer groups.
A further Toyota wouldn’t be capable to accrue WEC producer’s factors and as a substitute would compete within the World Cup for Groups during which the additional AF Ferrari and the Jota and Proton Competition Porsches presently take part.
What’s unclear is that if there could be room for an extra Toyota the 12 months after subsequent.
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Picture by: Emanuele Clivati | AG Picture
The WEC grid is heading in the right direction to develop to 40 automobiles subsequent 12 months concurrently producers look sure to be obliged to run two automobiles.
With the arrival of Aston Martin with two Valkyrie LMHs, an growth of the present one-car Cadillac, Lamborghini and Isotta Fraschini Hypercar programmes would probably imply the grid is oversubscribed.
Requested if there could be room for an extra Toyota with a continued growth of the Hypercar area, Leupen replied: “What number of automobiles does Porsche run? What number of automobiles does Ferrari run? So why ought to we not run three?”
Leupen added that there may very well be an overlap between the GR010 LMH and the hydrogen combustion prototype it’s planning to develop after the reveal of the GR H2 Concept at last year’s Le Mans 24 Hours.
The brand new hydrogen class isn’t set for an introduction into the sequence until at least 2027.