Earlier this month, Toyota wrapped up this year’s World Endurance Championship manufacturers’ crown with another convincing display on home turf at Fuji. It marks the fifth time in a row, and sixth in total, it has come away with the silverware, including the occasions when a teams’ title was awarded instead of a manufacturers’.
Pending the outcome of the final round of the season in Bahrain, Toyota could feasibly come away with a clean sweep of wins barring the Le Mans 24 Hours, where a contentious pre-event Balance of Performance change handed the initiative to Ferrari.
Toyota has come a long way since the beginning of its current WEC programme, which began in 2012 with the TS030 HYBRID LMP1 - which was followed up by the TS040 and TS050, and then in 2021 by the GR010 HYBRID built to Le Mans Hypercar rules.
But while its rise from underdog against the likes of Porsche and Audi to the dominant force fans know today is well documented, less well known is how a privateer Japanese constructor that was almost ever-present during Toyota’s top-flight absence at Le Mans after 1999 contributed to getting the marque’s LMP1 project off the ground.
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In fact, so close were the links between Toyota and Dome towards the end of this period that the latter’s short-lived but fondly-remembered S102 LMP1 car of 2008 can be described as the “elder sister” of the TS030 HYBRID according to its creator, Hiroshi Yuchi. And for a period of time, Dome was in line to mastermind Toyota’s long-awaited return to La Sarthe.
“We built the S102 because of Toyota, which contributed to the budget,” Yuchi tells Autosport. “We knew the performance of the Judd engine and the aerodynamics, and Toyota worked out what they had to do to be able to beat Audi.
“Then we were working on a test car in 2009 and 2010, but when Toyota decided to stop Formula 1, the entire project and all the data was transferred to TMG (now Toyota Gazoo Racing Europe) in Cologne at the end of 2010. After F1, they had no project in Cologne.”
Source: Autosport