The TS dynasty
The current car is the quickest ever seen at Le Mans, having set an all-time fastest lap in 2017 of 3m14.791s
Toyota is these days the last manufacturer standing in the LMP1 category of the FIA World Endurance Championship. Its programme is paid for by the company’s hybrid research and development department in Japan, but its actual development path has plateaued in the last five years as the manufacturer competition has slowly depleted, Audi leaving in 2016 and Porsche following it out of the door the year after.
The three manufacturers tried to find ways to save costs, and elected to only renew chassis every two years, meaning that the TS030 introduced in 2014, and 040 in 2016 followed that pattern. However, with limited competition, the 050 has run since 2016. Yet it is still dominating the championship.
The current car is the quickest ever seen at Le Mans, having set an all-time fastest lap in 2017 of 3m14.791s, with Kamui Kobayashi at the wheel, at an average speed of 251.9km/h. The 050 features more than 1000PS, weighs slightly under 900kg, and packs a twin-turbocharged 2.4-litre engine. It has crossed the line first in every round of the 2018/19 WEC season and in 2018 it became only the second car from a Japanese manufacturer to ever win at Le Mans; Mazda was the first back in 1991.
That was also the year that Toyota started its ‘TS’ naming process with the all-new TS010, featuring a 3.5-litre normally aspirated engine, a formula that had been decided upon by the FIA to encourage manufacturers to go to Formula 1 (which was then using this engine configuration). Toyota built the engine, but it didn’t go to Formula 1 for a further decade. The TS010 was designed by Tony Southgate and built at TRD (Toyota Racing Developments), but it was run at Le Mans by TOM’s GB, which operated out of a Toyota-owned facility in Norfolk, UK.
The racecar was fast enough to take on the Peugeot 905, but the team already knew this was not going to
