Title Image Credit: Toyota (GB) PLC
As the curtain falls on another season of the FIA World Endurance Championship – and indeed, its current set of technical regulations – Toyota fittingly have much to celebrate.
For the past decade, the Japanese manufacturer has been synonymous with the championship’s ‘LMP1’ prototype era, providing us with some of the biggest highs and lows that endurance racing has seen this century.
In fact, the painful scenes of Kazuki Nakajima’s #5 car grinding to a halt, just minutes away from the marque’s first ever victory at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, has to go down as one of the most iconic motorsport visuals ever.
Happily though, Toyota’s memories of the outgoing LMP1 regulations are generally a lot more positive than that.
Since the manufacturer’s arrival in the World Endurance paddock way back in 2012, they have amassed twenty-nine race wins and multiple teams’ and drivers’ championship titles, as well as three successive Le Mans victories since 2018.
However, the brand’s success has been cast against the backdrop of a racing series which has struggled for stability in recent years. The days of Porsche and Audi entering factory teams into the premier class of the championship are long-gone, with Toyota being left to carry the weight of the championship’s credibility almost entirely.
After a year of Toyota dominance following the withdrawal of the two aforementioned German brands, it was decided that the TS050 prototype would have to be artificially hamstrung in order for the more rudimentary, independently-entered cars of Rebellion and Team LNT to stand a chance against it.
Desperate to fabricate a spectacle where one failed to naturally blossom, the championship’s organisers elected to implement an ‘equivalence of technology’ system for the 2019/20 racing season. The hope was that this might level the playing field between Toyota and their significantly less well-funded rivals.
Crucially neither the Rebellion, nor Team LNT cars featured a hybrid system due to the added expense of developing such a thing, which naturally gave Toyota the upper hand. But, thanks to the new fuel and power restrictions, the advantage provided by hybrid technology could be stifled.
The new measures did have the desired effect, with Rebellion taking victory at both Shanghai and the Circuit of the Americas this season. That said, it arguably worsened the viewing experience as a whole, as audiences with prior knowledge of the series could easily see through the dishonesty of what they were being shown on track. While chasing entertainment factor, the championship lost a significant chunk of its integrity.
Clearly then, something had to change, and that change will come about in the form of a major shake-up of the technical rule set ahead of 2021. As such, the now-iconic TS050 Hybrid prototype faces retirement, with Toyota set to unveil their new challenger for the LMH ‘Hypercar’ regulations in due course.
But, before the cars were consigned to a life as museum attractions, there was still one more race – and one more title – to decide.
Following victory at the the 2020 edition of Le Mans, the #8 Toyota of Sébastien Buemi, Kazuki Nakajima and Brendon Hartley arrived at the Sakhir circuit as the championship-leading car. However, it was the #7 machine of Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi and José Maria Lopez which took pole position.
In truth, it was only ever going to be a two-horse battle for the title this time, as Rebellion elected to not even turn up for the final event. Likewise, Team LNT were also absent, partly for financial reasons, and partly due to the complications created by Covid-19.
As a result, the World Endurance Championship was left with a rather sorry looking entry list for the 8 Hours of Bahrain, with only two cars competing in its premier class. The final race of the LMP1 era therefore took on a rather symbolic presence, as Toyota were destined to lead from the front while the team’s rivals were – quite literally this time – nowhere to be seen.
Nevertheless, the two sister cars duelled away in the desert, with the #7 eventually crossing the line to take victory ahead of the #8 in second place. But, given the controversial handicap system used by the championship, the #8 car was always going to find the race to be an uphill battle.
With that, Conway, Kobayashi & Lopez had overhauled their team-mates in the overall standings, earning them the championship honours for this year and thus ending the #8 car’s two years of dominance.
Kobayashi, who brought the #7 car home to the finish, was obviously delighted with his day’s work:
“Thank you very much [to everyone at Toyota Gazoo Racing] for all the support from Japan and Cologne, especially looking back to the very hard work done on the TS050 since 2016,” he said.
“It has not been easy but now we have great memories with this car. The team won Le Mans three times and now we are the World Champions with the #7 car.
“We cannot ask for more than this result, but it’s not only achieved by the drivers. To the mechanics, engineers and everyone who worked on the project, thank you all so much.”
Although Toyota may want to bask in celebration, it is fair to say that the rest of the World Endurance Championship paddock will now be looking on eagerly towards the future.
Having concluded an increasingly untenable period of the championship’s history, the next few years are already looking brighter.
Alpine, Glickenhaus, ByKolles and Peugeot have all registered their interest in entering cars for the new rule set, while more manufacturers are expected to join the series in coming years. But, whether any of them are able to challenge the might of the Japanese marque of course remains to be seen.
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