Endurance racing news

[gucom]

Finally the first pictures of the new Toyota LMP1!


No name given yet, we know it's a petrol hybrid and that's about it.

It looks like a mash-up of a Dome S102, Peugeot 908 and Audi R18! If they ever want to use this car in an advertising campaign, they'd do well to make the headlights look a bit less hideous, and make the shark fin look smaller by using a different paint job.

Other than that, it looks to be fairly conventional in terms of aerodynamics, I see nothing really innovative yet, although I don't think I've seen rear wing endplates starting all the way over the rear wheel before...

I'm very curious about the technology under the skin, and how it will develop in the months till its first race (expected to be the 2nd round of the FIA World Endurance Championship, at Spa in may). Remember, this was only the rollout test so there's still a lot of development on this car to be done!

[gucom]

oh n0es   on the same day we get the first pics of Toyota's new LMP1, Peugeot stop their Le Mans / endurance racing program!
 
[update] apparently it's because of financial reasons, PSA went from predicting a nice profit to just about breaking even to posting a pretty massive loss in the last 6 months or so.
 
Really sad to see, just when the World Endurance Championship is about to begin, offering a lot more prestige (with lots of F1 drivers who failed to get a seat this year announcing they'd be happy to be in the WEC), they pull out... hopefully they can make it back when their situation improves, but I can't imagine such a comeback happening in 2013 already...

[goodduck]

real shame about peugeot. so many good years of racing with them and audi. does this toyota have a chance of being competitive with audi? would be pretty lame to see audi 123 with ease at le mans.


that toyota is ugly but im happy to see it. hopefully they can make it a bit prettier before its debut. will it be at sebring?

[gucom]

Toyota will probably debut at Spa, so not at Sebring yet... so yeah, the first year of WEC is almost guaranteed to go to Audi 

regarding the Toyota's competitiveness, it's really hard to say.
Aerodynamically it doesn't look like it brings anything really radical; when the R18 came out, I was amazed by all the little details everywhere, and in subsequent tests they tried out a million different things which really impressed me.
We'll have to see how Toyota handles the decelopment of their car, but so far only one car has been confirmed for 2012, indicating they might see it more as a testing season than the year where they expect to go for glory.
One thing that might benefit Toyota is that the ACO have pegged the diesel restrictors back quite a bit for 2012, so it might be that petrol engined cars are a bit closer to the diesels by default.

[danidmas]

It's a shame that Peugeot has cancelled their endurance program. Their battles with Audi will be as remembered as the ones between Ferrari-Ford and Porsche-Ferrari.

ALMS 2009 Sebring Audi vs Peugeot

[goodduck]

its possible that the r15 is my favorite sportscar of all time FUCK that thing is sick




edit




someone suggested on club arnage that pescarolo could run a car with a pug diesel engine. just speculation but could be interesting.

[danidmas]

someone suggested on club arnage that pescarolo could run a car with a pug diesel engine. just speculation but could be interesting.

Then I read somewhere else that one of their big sponsors was Renault Rent or something like that... and that this could be a problem if they went for the Peugeot engines. 

[gucom]

yeah the R15, particularly the 2009 model, looked absolutely fucking amazing (2010 was kinda fugly).

regarding a team like Pescarolo running a Peugeot engine, I'd love to see it happen, also because it would shed a lot of light on the petrol / diesel equivalence (just to see how much of Audi / Peugeot's speed has been due to diesels getting more favorable rules, and how much of it is due to the factory teams spending up to 50 million a year to perfect the entire car).

From what I head he had some trouble getting enough sponsorship to enter the WEC though, so if this Peugeot engine would cost him a lot of money I'm sure he wouldn't be able to do it.

[gucom]

The Toyota TS030 has been officially unveiled


They'll have 2 cars at Le Mans. It has a 3.4 litre naturally aspirated V8, with a hybrid system. They're still trying to decide whether to let the hybrid system drive the front wheels, or the rears. The first race will be at the 6 hours of Spa on may 5th. One car will be driven by Alexander Wurz, Nicolas Lapierre and Kazuki Nakajima.

Before the car's debut, they want to have at least 40.000 testing kilometres done... they're serious about this one!

More pics and info here:
http://www.racecar-engineering.com/news/toyota-ts030-lmp1-hybrid-revealed/
I have to say at first I thought it was kind of ugly, but already I'm liking it more and more. Not sure if I like it better than Audi's WW1 tank / LMP car mash-up, but still, very nice!

The car's name is a continuation of Toyota's earlier Le Mans cars (the GT One's official name was TS020, and before that was the TS010, with the TS standing for the 010's designer Tony Southgate)

[yeckmohr]

my osteopath told me today that he is responsible for michael bartels and vitaphone racing since years, they will drive this year in the GT1 class with a Z4 GT3 after racing last year with the Ferrari 458 and the ferrari was so often broken that they decided to change to BMW.

[bmagni]

The Toyota TS030 has been officially unveiled
(Image removed from quote.)

They'll have 2 cars at Le Mans. It has a 3.4 litre naturally aspirated V8, with a hybrid system. They're still trying to decide whether to let the hybrid system drive the front wheels, or the rears. The first race will be at the 6 hours of Spa on may 5th. One car will be driven by Alexander Wurz, Nicolas Lapierre and Kazuki Nakajima.

Before the car's debut, they want to have at least 40.000 testing kilometres done... they're serious about this one!

More pics and info here:
http://www.racecar-engineering.com/news/toyota-ts030-lmp1-hybrid-revealed/
I have to say at first I thought it was kind of ugly, but already I'm liking it more and more. Not sure if I like it better than Audi's WW1 tank / LMP car mash-up, but still, very nice!

The car's name is a continuation of Toyota's earlier Le Mans cars (the GT One's official name was TS020, and before that was the TS010, with the TS standing for the 010's designer Tony Southgate)

According to Toyota, TS is an acronym for Toyota Sport

TOYOTA TS030 Hybrid - Onboard with Alex Wurz

[gucom]

oooh I've really missed having a factory car with a proper sounding engine! thanks for the vid!

I can't find where I read the TS / Tony Southgate reference, but that was in reference to the TS010 anyway. I'm sureyou're right that the TS030's name is just a reference to Toyota Sport by now.

Pretty cool @ michael bartels and the Z4 by the way, I absolutely love that car, both in street and racing form. I really hope it'll come to Le Mans some time in the future... and funny how you got that information

[bmagni]

oooh I've really missed having a factory car with a proper sounding engine! thanks for the vid!

NA V8 FTW 

[danidmas]

That onboard video is pretty cool! Let's see if those TS030 are as competitive as the old GT-One!

[goodduck]

DOME is back!!!!


i love this car so much.





http://www.autoweek.com/article/20120202/ALMS/120209981

[gucom]

that's fucking awesome!!! That car is so beautiful, I'm so happy that I'll get to see it compete with my own eyes! It is a bit odd to see the rear fin on it, but I'll get used to it...

In other news, there'll be 4 Audi R18's at Le Mans, of which 2 will be diesel hybrids and 2 will be regular diesels. They'll have 2 cars in most WEC races, but more at Sebring and maybe some other races.

Toyota will field 2 cars, and one of Rebellion Racing's privateer Lola Toyota's will be piloted by Nick Heidfeld.
BMW is out of GT racing now that they're involved in DTM (and rumour has it they, in the form of Mini, might pull out of WRC too!), and Ferraris are easily the most popular cars in the GTE classes - what a change from the Porsche dominated days!
Corvette Racing won't compete in the WEC but it will at Le Mans (at the WEC, Larbre Racing will be fielding Corvettes).
The only Lotus in GTE is on the Le Mans reserve list. They do have one Lotus sponsored car in LMP2, but that's a Lola chassis using an adapted BMW engine with had a Lotus badge glued on.
Aston Martin Racing are back in GTE as a factory team with the Vantage V8.

There might be teams entering some select WEC races without competing for the full season, which therefore haven't been named yet. Toyota will miss Sebring but attend all the other races.

[danidmas]

... and Ferraris are easily the most popular cars in the GTE classes - what a change from the Porsche dominated days!

The funniest part is that the oooooold 997 GT3 RSR still managed to finish 1-2-3 at the Daytona 24h, in front of a field full of 458 Italias!

[gucom]

a little update about the endurance racing world:

2012 FIA World Endurance Championship entry list:
http://www.planetlemans.com/2012/02/13/fia-wec-full-season-entry-list/

2012 Le Mans entry list:
http://www.planetlemans.com/2012/02/02/le-mans-24-hours-the-2012-entries/

Most notable differences at the head of the field: at Le Mans, there'll be a second Toyota TS030 (petrol hybrid). Audi will add 2 R18 non-hybrid diesels to the R18 hybrid diesels they're running in the WEC.

In GTE, there're some other nice developments.
Aston Martin is back in GT racing (after a horribly failed adventure in LMP1) with a factory team, using the V8 Vantage. Here's a vid, the sound is just 

Aston Martin Racing - V8 Vantage GTE

The GTE rules have been modified slightly to allow for wider cars, and if you take a small car like the 911 and make the race version as wide as allowed, it becomes very wide-body indeed!

[Schwalbe]

^^^^^^Racing Porsche GT3 & widebody monster...the perfect combo. 
 
Thanks mate for your LeMans update. 

[gucom]

Audi revealed their 2012 versions of the R18:

R18 Ultra (turbo-diesel V6)


R18 e-tron quattro (turbo-diesel V6 with flywheel KERS driving the front wheels, just like the Porsche GT3R Hybrid that competed in the Nürburgring 24 hours and the American Le Mans Series)