Toyota is set to face its sternest test in the World Endurance Championship this year since the Hypercar class replaced LMP1 in 2021.
New LMDh machines balanced to match the Le Mans Hypercars have brought entries from Porsche and Cadillac, while Ferrari's first top class effort in a generation and a full season assault from Peugeot make this the most eagerly-anticipated season in the WEC's modern history. The presence of privateer entries from Glickenhaus and Vanwall, with Jacques Villeneuve in tow, means there will be no shortage of storylines across the seven-round championship.
Ahead of this weekend's season-opening Sebring 1000, Autosport considers the prospects of Toyota and its challengers.
#7 Mike Conway/Kamui Kobayashi/Jose Maria Lopez
#8 Sebastien Buemi/Brendon Hartley/Ryo Hirakawa
Toyota is returning to the WEC for its 11th straight campaign with a clear target in front of it – and one on its back as well. It has swept to five consecutive Le Mans victories and four championship drivers’ and manufacturers’ doubles in the absence of any proper factory opposition, so continuing that run will go a long way to legitimising those successes. And as the incumbent king of the WEC with a proven car and an established driver line-up, the odds look good for it to be able to do just that.
An all-new LMH was on the drawing board as Toyota cast an eye on the arrival of Ferrari, Porsche et al for this year, but it opted instead to evolve the GR010 HYBRID that came on stream in 2021. There is no change in the driver line-up after reserve Nyck de Vries landed a Formula 1 seat at AlphaTauri. Sebastien Buemi, Brendon Hartley and Ryo Hirakawa defend their title in the #8 Toyota Gazoo Racing entry, while Kamui Kobayashi, Mike Conway and Jose Maria Lopez – who back in the middle of last season had looked certain to be replaced by de Vries – stay together for a fifth campaign in #7.
The improvements to the GR010, powered by a 3.5-litre twin-turbo V6 within the strict criteria laid down in the LMH rules, are less extreme than for last season and have been focused on driveability, serviceability and reliability, as well as bringing the weight down close to the 1040kg minimum for four-wheel-drive machinery. Essentially, Toyota wanted to create a more raceable machine.
“We have not been working on pure aero efficiency, rather aero consistency, trying to help driveability,” says Toyota Gazoo Racing Europe technical director Pascal Vasselon. “We have worked to have as consistent a car as possible.”
That will be key in a championship where the performance of the cars is levelled up under a Balance of Performance formula. The same logic applies to revisions to the brake cooling for the new season.
“Within a balanced category, one of the items related to racecraft is serviceability of the car,” explains Vasselon. “We have been at times struggling to adjust the brake cooling. We have gone to a different cooling duct arrangement, so we can add or remove blanking very easily.”
Development on the reliability of the GR010 includes what the team believes is a successful attempt to overcome the ECU glitch that has cropped up on multiple occasions over the past two years. That included last year’s Le Mans, when the multiple resets for #7 in hour 16 took it out of contention in the fierce battle with the winning sister car.
It all adds up to a package that has to make Toyota the favourite going into the season, Buemi admitting that “it’s a bit difficult to deny that”. But the Swiss insists the team is “staying humble and not underestimating anyone” with the arrival of some real opposition for the first time since 2017.
#93 Mikkel Jensen/Paul di Resta/Jean-Eric Vergne
#94 Loic Duval/Gustavo Menezes/Nico Muller
Peugeot enters a first full season in the WEC with its avant-garde 9X8 LMH unchanged in concept from last year. So that means no sign of a conventional rear wing! There has, however, been an intensive winter development programme, spanning 6000 miles and three endurance tests, after a troublesome exploratory campaign by the sportscar racing returnee in the three post-Le Mans WEC races in 2022.
The results of that development will be entrusted to the same line-up that raced for the Peugeot TotalEnergies team in last year’s Bahrain season finale. Nico Muller, who took the place filled by reserve driver James Rossiter for Monza and Fuji after Kevin Magnussen’s pre-season return to F1, shares the #94 entry with Loic Duval and Gustavo Menezes, while Paul di Resta, Jean-Eric Vergne and Mikkel Jensen are teamed in #93.
The French manufacturer’s comeback to front-line endurance racing was announced way back in November 2019 for an entry at the start of the 2022-23 season, which, had the WEC’s winter format not been blown out of the water by COVID, would have meant a debut at the back end of last summer. So the Monza debut in July for the 9X8 certainly didn’t represent a delay for the striking hybrid contender powered by a 2.6-litre twin-turbo V6.
Peugeot made two full-season entries last year but chose six months of testing over racing in the first half of the series, in the knowledge that the specification of the car would be largely fixed once it was homologated. It wasn’t entirely convincing on its arrival: Peugeot failed to get a car to the end of a single one of the six-hour races without delays, and showed flashes of pace rather than consistently doing so.
However disappointing the results were last year, it was a valuable experience for an in-house team that is largely new as it geared up for its a bid to add to its tally of Le Mans victories in the middle of its first full campaign with the 9X8. Peugeot’s successes with the 908 LMP1 turbodiesels, including the last of its three victories at the French enduro in 2009, are now ancient history.
Olivier Jansonnie, technical director on the 9X8 programme, gives Peugeot “seven out of 10 or maybe eight for the way we developed the team”. It would have to be “a lot lower” when it came to reliability, he admits.
In terms of performance he insists that the 9X8 “showed some good stuff”, particularly in Bahrain when #93 qualified on the front row and set the fastest race lap. He suggests that it is difficult to judge the car’s long-run pace given its poor reliability in the eight-hour finale.
The measures to address the weaknesses have been undertaken right across the car, “a bit of aero and mechanical design, as well as work on the powertrain”, says Jansonnie. “If everything has gone to plan we should be where we wanted to be last year.”
#50 Antonio Fuoco/Miguel Molina/Nicklas Nielsen
#51 James Calado/Antonio Giovinazzi/Alessandro Pier Guidi
The significance of Ferrari’s factory return to the top-flight of sportscar racing cannot be understated. The presence of the most famous motor racing marque at the front of the WEC grid provides the cream on an already luscious cake.
It is coming back 50 years on from its last such campaign, and doing so in the centenary year for Le Mans. The significance was not lost on Ferrari and its sportscar racing boss Antonello Coletta: “All the numbers have come in a magic moment. We understood that the occasion was great.”
The result of the decision to return announced in February 2021 is the 499P hybrid Le Mans Hypercar, a machine that will race in a livery that tips its hat to the marque’s last Le Mans contender, the 312 PB three-litre Group 6 car of 1973.
Autosport