According to the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper, Toyota is setting its sights on participating in the 2010 24 hours of Le Mans - with a hybrid racer.
No doubt inspired by the success of the Toyota Team SARD hybrid Supra in the Tokachi 24-hour enduro (above), Toyota is banking on hybrid technology to give it the edge over the rest of the field at Le Mans, a race which it has never won and last contested in 1999 with the GT-One.
Victory at endurance races like Le Mans has a lot to do with overall efficiency and the more kilometres that can be extracted from each litre of fuel, the less time is wasted in pitlane, refuelling. According to sources within the company, Toyota has allocated dozens of employees from its hyrbid and motorsports departments to focus on the Le Mans effort who will attempt to produce a hybrid race car that can give Toyota the motorsports success it so desperately craves. Among the most significant hurdles that the devlopment team will need to overcome include the high weight inherent in petrol-electic powertrains, as well as relatively low transmission efficiency.
Can Toyota do it? We'll have to wait a couple of years to find out, but the Supra HV-R's win at Tokachi is definitely a proof-of-concept if we ever saw one.
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