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Will Le Mans be Toyota's race to lose?

Laurence Foster / Images by LAT

In theory, the only question regarding Toyota in the 2017 24 Hours of Le Mans is which of its three TS050 HYBRID LMP1 prototypes will take the overall win? Yet in reality, the prospect of a first victory for the Japanese giant after 18 attempts and five excruciating runner-up finishes is far from clear cut.
Sure, LMP1 rival Porsche finished the June 4 test day some 3.38sec down on the fastest Toyota and freely conceded its pair of 919 Hybrids are also-rans on single-lap pace, but Le Mans isn't won or lost over one lap of the 8.47-mile Circuit de la Sarthe. Instead, it's determined by flawless execution of the long game: optimizing pace over each multi-lap stint, minimizing time spent in the pits, and ensuring that strategy is both flexible and smart enough to respond to whatever the race might bring, be it weather, safety cars or a rival's unfolding gameplan. In other words, everything 18-time overall winner Porsche has proved a master of over the decades.
Of course, having the fastest car is hardly a hindrance, but in the era of bewilderingly-complex, 1,000hp, hybrid LMP1 prototypes, stored-energy harvest/release profiles, multi-stint tire strategies and, yes, even the human factor – a driver's ability to metronomically hit marks, punch in the right settings at the right moment, and react to P2 and GT traffic at closing speeds often touching 50mph-plus – are all major factors in the performance matrix, too.
When it comes to outright speed, Toyota looks a shoo-in for the pole, and perhaps even the first three starting positions. Kamui Kobayashi (RIGHT) was the only Toyota driver to simulate a qualifying run, but his 3m18.132s lap in the No. 7 TS050 was 1.5sec quicker than last year's pole time, set by Porsche's Neel Jani – this despite aero rule changes designed to keep LMP1 lap times in check. And as Kobayashi noted, his fast time was set despite being hindered by traffic on both of his flying lap attempts. If the weather plays ball, expect at least one Toyota to dip into the 3m16s range and outright pole record territory during the trio of two-hour qualifying sessions scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday evening.
Perhaps more ominously for Porsche, Sebastien Buemi's quick time in the No. 8 Toyota of 3m19.290s was set with a full fuel load, yet still good enough for the second-fastest overall lap. The Swiss driver, with teammates Anthony Davidson and Kazuki Nakajima, has been the FIA World Endurance Championship's benchmark so far in 2017, winning the season-opening six-hour races at Silverstone and Spa in the high-downforce-spec TS050. The Le Mans test day was Buemi's first head to head with Porsche at the wheel of a low-drag version, and he was impressed by what it delivered.
"It's good to be back at Le Mans and great to see a Toyota lapping in under 3m20s for the first time," he noted. "I'm happy because it was a smooth day and we did more than 100 laps; over a quarter of the race distance. Now I'm looking forward to race week."
For Buemi and Co., the return to Le Mans is a chance of redemption after coming within a lap of victory last year. In a shocking denouement, with Nakajima at the wheel, a broken connector on an airhose between the turbo and the intercooler – we'd call it a trivial part, but nothing's trivial when it comes to racing twice around the clock – saw the car grinding to a halt when victory for Toyota seemed assured. Still, they say what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, and the response so far from Toyota Gazoo Racing and the No. 8 crew speaks to that.
The No. 7 (with Mike Conway and Stephane Sarrazin alongside Kobayashi) and 8 are the two main weapons in Toyota's three-car arsenal, but a third, Le Mans-and-done entry – the No. 9, driven by Nicolas Lapierre and Le Mans rookies Yuji Kunimoto and Jose Maria Lopez – adds an intriguing dimension. It's the first time Toyota has fielded a third LMP1 entry at La Sarthe, and it would be a stretch to predict it emulating Porsche's 2015 win with its "guest" lineup of Earl Bamber, Nico Hulkenberg and Nick Tandy, but what chance a podium? The extra TS050 is identical in spec to the regular entries, while the pressure's off and expectations aren't sky high for its driver lineup, so watch this space.



Toyota introduced its TS050 HYBRID last year, but 2017 seems the year when its potential could be fully realized. The switch from the TS040's 3.7-liter, normally-aspirated V8 and super-capacitor energy-storage system to a 2.4-liter, twin-turbo V6 and lithium-ion storage battery was a major change in philosophy for Toyota's Cologne, Germany-based motorsports group, so 2016 was always going to be a learning curve. This year, it's all about exploiting the package to its fullest – and in that respect, Toyota has a lot more scope for progress relative to the more mature and fully-realized tech in Porsche's 919, which made its competition debut in 2014.
Also on Toyota's side are those aero rules tweaks. With a smaller overall budget than Porsche (or the recently-exited Audi), Toyota's R&D dollars were weighted toward low-downforce, low-drag development for the high-speed Le Mans circuit. In past seasons, that proved something of a hindrance in the bread-and-butter, six-hour races that make up the bulk of the WEC, but with the ACO and FIA reducing overall downforce levels for 2017, it plays well for Toyota's ongoing philosophy.
In contrast to Toyota's "all guns blazing" start to the 2017 WEC season, Porsche pretty much admitted it was writing off the opening two races. Instead of running in high-downforce, "sprint" configuration at the six-hour events (each manufacturer is allowed to homologate two aero kits – basically, low- and high-downforce), its 919 Hybrids appeared with Le Mans-spec bodywork. The official line is that it's giving its designers more time to hone a high-downforce kit for the post-Le Mans six-hour races that make up the bulk of the WEC season, but it has also allowed the team and its drivers to gain familiarity with the 2017-spec Le Mans package. Question is, did they expect that package to be so far off the pace at the test relative to the TS050s?
"Could we match the pace of the Toyota?" mused team principal Andreas Seidl, post-test. "Impossible. That was something we couldn't do."
But what about in race configuration? Porsche didn't run in qualifying spec at the test day, so perhaps the fairest comparison of performance between the 919 and the TS050 is using Buemi's fast lap for reference. In which case, Earl Bamber's 3m21.512s effort in the No. 2 Porsche (ABOVE) was only 2.222sec off Toyota's possible race pace. It's still far from inconsequential, but it's better than 3.38...
Bamber (LEFT) joins Timo Bernhard and Brendon Hartley in the No. 2 Porsche, with Neel Jani, Nick Tandy and three-time Le Mans winner and former Audi driver Andre Lotterer in the No. 1 machine. That's a fearsome driver roster, and Porsche remains bullish that race week will be a closer-fought affair, citing track conditions (the same track conditions encountered by Toyota, of course...), as well as an engine problem in the No. 2 car, as minor irritations in its race-centric test day program.
"We were focusing on race setup and refrained from simulating qualifying," said Seidl. "Although we didn't achieve the mileage we wanted, we still learned important lessons for the race regarding tire choice and tire wear. Toyota's speed was impressive, and we could not match it, but in the coming days we will analyze the data and draw our conclusions to improve our cars' performance."

But with the 919 Hybrid already into its fourth season of competition – albeit significantly updated and refined each season – the question is, how much performance improvement is there to be found, or has the two-time Le Mans-winning design reached a performance plateau? If it's the latter, then Porsche's unrivaled experience and usually impeccable strategy and preparation might be it's get-out-of-jail card. Fact is, Porsche knows how to win the 24 Hours of Le Mans; Toyota, frustratingly, only knows how to lose it...
That being said, let's stick our neck out and predict a result.
With it's test day speed, a full season of development for its TS050, and the insurance policy of three cars to Porsche's pair, we're saying Toyota. Specifically, a redemption tale and a victory for the No. 8 of Buemi, Davidson and Nakajima.
And chasing it home? The No. 1 Porsche 919 Hybrid of Jani, Lotterer and Tandy, running like a train, executing to perfection, but just missing out on the last one percent of performance that would transform a dogged pursuit into a genuine head to head.

FOOTNOTE: There is a sixth LMP1 car on the entry list, and that's the ByKolles Racing Team ENSO CLM-NISMO P1/01 driven by Marco Bonanomi, Dominik Kraihamer and secret weapon Oliver Webb (BELOW). No hybrid bells and whistles for this plucky privateer, but it has found four seconds over its 2016 performance and it does look capable of going the distance and – crucially – outpacing the fastest of the packed field of P2 cars. It's a long-shot scenario, but should we lose three of the five factory LMP1s for whatever reasons, look out for some ecstatic ByKolles faces on the overall podium. Hey, it's Le Mans, so anything can happen...


RACER.com coverage of the 24 Hours of Le Mans is presented by Lone Star Le Mans, a six-hour sprint deep in the heart of Texas: September 15-16 at COTA.

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