[WEC] Toyota Hypercar Discussion

[canaglia]

Originally Posted by chernaudi

I've read elsewhere on here that Toyota are planning a fairly big joker upgrade for next season. Could this be in response to Peugeot's design and merging LMDH cars, or does the current version of the GR010 have a major issue?

for what I've seen so far, they need to dramatically improve braking stability... which implies a heavy work on ERS and suspensions as well, which in turn implies a heavy work on chassis too...

[Pandamasque]

Originally Posted by chernaudi

I've read elsewhere on here that Toyota are planning a fairly big joker upgrade for next season. Could this be in response to Peugeot's design and merging LMDH cars, or does the current version of the GR010 have a major issue?

There's certainly a major issue for cars just in front of it in the braking zone!

[Gingers4Justice]

Bookmark this post: a Toyota will end up beached in the gravel at Mulsanne corner at Le Mans.

[canaglia]

Originally Posted by Gingers4Justice

Bookmark this post: a Toyota will end up beached in the gravel at Mulsanne corner at Le Mans.

well..... actually there are also dunlop chicane, first and second hunaudières chicane tyrewalls, indianapolis, arnage, porsche sector entry and virage du karting... all places where last thing you need is a braking failure...

[Mike E]

My bet is Arnage gravel with brakes still hot from Indianapolis.

[Pandamasque]

Yeah, I'd say Mulsanne is a relatively low risk one. There are escape roads and such. Indianapolis is the tough one and also very sensitive to brake balance. It's difficult enough in a normal car, but when you have brake by wire and kers harvesting playing tricks on you it must be a nightmare.

[greenmachinets040]

Originally Posted by Pandamasque

Yeah, I'd say Mulsanne is a relatively low risk one. There are escape roads and such. Indianapolis is the tough one and also very sensitive to brake balance. It's difficult enough in a normal car, but when you have brake by wire and kers harvesting playing tricks on you it must be a nightmare.

I like how everyone is suddenly a racecar engineer..I am confident they have this "problem" under control, and Toyota should be not buried before LM. If you like Glickenhaus instead you should not troll this thread, go there instead and root for your team.

[Aysedasi]

I think there is a place for comparisons in both threads. Yes, many of us like Glickenhaus, but that's not really surprising is it? We have had Toyota winning uncontested for some time, so if we spot what appear to be weaknesses, it isn't trolling to point them out. Wishful thinking perhaps....?

[greenmachinets040]

Originally Posted by Aysedasi

I think there is a place for comparisons in both threads. Yes, many of us like Glickenhaus, but that's not really surprising is it? We have had Toyota winning uncontested for some time, so if we spot what appear to be weaknesses, it isn't trolling to point them out. Wishful thinking perhaps....?

I totally understand your point. As it has been sad many times, that is not Toyota s fault, that they were uncontested. The whole WEC can be thankful to Toyota. The 2014, 2016 and 2017 all incidents were out of Toyota s control at LM, all three cases came by severely bad luck.

Audi won LM uncontested a lot of times and even so everyone rooted for them just because they were Audi/german.

[CTD]

Originally Posted by greenmachinets040

Audi won LM uncontested a lot of times and even so everyone rooted for them just because they were Audi/german.

The fan support for Audi has nothing to do with the brand and their nationality, but everything to do with the way they treated the fans. Audi earned the fans hearts.
I am not saying Toyota are bad, but they do not offer the same “services” as Audi did. Therefore they do not win “extra points”, but still have a lot of supporters.
They simply loose out to the fans, when an underdog like Glickenhaus comes around who plays with fully open cards.

[greenmachinets040]

Originally Posted by CTD

The fan support for Audi has nothing to do with the brand and their nationality, but everything to do with the way they treated the fans. Audi earned the fans hearts.
I am not saying Toyota are bad, but they do not offer the same “services” as Audi did. Therefore they do not win “extra points”, but still have a lot of supporters.
They simply loose out to the fans, when an underdog like Glickenhaus comes around who plays with fully open cards.

I do not know how it is in your country, but in the middle/eastern Europe the marque Audi is treated like god. Because they are the trademark for quality/german quality.

I am silently telling you that Toyota cars have better quality cars and they do not have the recognition of the likes of Audi cars.

What services do you mean from Audi? Do they treat customers/fans better?
With what did they earn fans hearts? By applying dirty tactics in DTM never seen before in motorsports?

TBH Audi never acted as a humble team nor did they try extremely to be like that. Take just Kristensen, Loic Duval, Lotterer, Ulrich and Gade. They were just like inflated frogs - subjective opinion, not to insult anyone.

[CTD]

Originally Posted by greenmachinets040

I do not know how it is in your country, but in the middle/eastern Europe the marque Audi is treated like god. Because they are the trademark for quality/german quality.

I am silently telling you that Toyota cars have better quality cars and they do not have the recognition of the likes of Audi cars.

What services do you mean from Audi? Do they treat customers/fans better?
With what did they earn fans hearts? By applying dirty tactics in DTM never seen before in motorsports?

TBH Audi never acted as a humble team nor did they try extremely to be like that. Take just Kristensen, Loic Duval, Lotterer, Ulrich and Gade. They were just like inflated frogs - subjective opinion, not to insult anyone.

Seeing this being a Toyota thread, I do not wish to dive into the discussion. However reading that you believe a driver like Tom Kristensen is a “inflated frog” (do not know what you mean other than being negative) tells me you have never 1st hand experienced the Audi Sport fan services they offered at Le Mans.
As a side note, Tom K is probably the most down to earth and nice guy you can ever meet! (And that is taking my national bias aside)

[greenmachinets040]

Originally Posted by CTD

Seeing this being a Toyota thread, I do not wish to dive into the discussion. However reading that you believe a driver like Tom Kristensen is a “inflated frog” (do not know what you mean other than being negative) tells me you have never 1st hand experienced the Audi Sport fan services they offered at Le Mans.
As a side note, Tom K is probably the most down to earth and nice guy you can ever meet! (And that is taking my national bias aside)

Unfortunately I have never experienced any kind of services from Audi. As an Audi driver I can understand that Kristensen is biased towards them, but I cought a few of his words when he was commenting live during the 2018 24 h of LM: When at the start the Nr. 8 Toyota was hit by the Rebellion he told immediately also by pointing his finger to the camera "Toyota could have an issue here" as he barely waits Toyota to have problems. That was not too nice.

Anyway, record LM winner, but as Lotterer once said after being asked by Toyota to be their driver, he said: "As a former Audi driver I have to decline the opportunity to be a Toyota driver".

[canaglia]

Originally Posted by greenmachinets040

Unfortunately I have never experienced any kind of services from Audi. As an Audi driver I can understand that Kristensen is biased towards them, but I cought a few of his words when he was commenting live during the 2018 24 h of LM: When at the start the Nr. 8 Toyota was hit by the Rebellion he told immediately also by pointing his finger to the camera "Toyota could have an issue here" as he barely waits Toyota to have problems. That was not too nice.

Anyway, record LM winner, but as Lotterer once said after being asked by Toyota to be their driver, he said: "As a former Audi driver I have to decline the opportunity to be a Toyota driver".

you would be surprised to know that lotterer was at the same time a work driver for both audi/VW and toyota for years
and full disagree about "inflated frogs"... maybe lotterer and duval are not at the moment the best drivers around anymore but in early-mid '10 they were clearly the best! audi won LM 2011 and LM 2014 mainly because of lotterer crazy stints and for the whole 2013 WEC season, duval shown to be one or two levels above everyone else.
The only thing I could partially agree is that for many years kristensen was able to win having the best car and without a serious contender (other audi drivers aside) but this could be said also about hamilton, schumacher, vettel etc...

[S griffin]

Lotterer has made a nice career for himself, it's always good to see him go well in Sportscars. I think he deserves a lot of respect. Maybe he's not quite what he was, same with Duval, but he made the best decision to go into sportscars after missing the boat in single seaters, although at least he got to do one F1 race! Very underappreciated I think, he's made the best use of what he's got. I don't think the WEC really picked up until 2014, but against tough opposition, Andre has done very well

Shame the competition has gone down again, we need more in WEC, but then I feel F1 has been bit lacking in competition at the front at times, so there you go

[Aysedasi]

Originally Posted by greenmachinets040

I totally understand your point. As it has been sad many times, that is not Toyota s fault, that they were uncontested. The whole WEC can be thankful to Toyota. The 2014, 2016 and 2017 all incidents were out of Toyota s control at LM, all three cases came by severely bad luck.

Audi won LM uncontested a lot of times and even so everyone rooted for them just because they were Audi/german.

Absolutely, I wholeheartedly agree. When Audi and Porsche ran away, Toyota stuck it out and I'm very grateful to them.

[Aysedasi]

I think we have now gone off topic people. Greenmachine will not be aware of the courtesies afforded to some of the Ten Tenths members at Le Mans by Audi in the past (although I should add that we also had the pleasure of a visit with Toyota too! ).

[Pandamasque]

Why are talking about this?

Originally Posted by greenmachinets040

As it has been sad many times, that is not Toyota s fault, that they were uncontested. The whole WEC can be thankful to Toyota. The 2014, 2016 and 2017 all incidents were out of Toyota s control at LM, all three cases came by severely bad luck.

Audi won LM uncontested a lot of times and even so everyone rooted for them just because they were Audi/german.

What does this have to do with anything that was said?

Also not everyone rooted for Audi. I, for one, always supported the challengers be it Pescarolo, Aston, Peugeot, Toyota, Rebellion etc.

Originally Posted by greenmachinets040

I like how everyone is suddenly a racecar engineer..I am confident they have this "problem" under control, and Toyota should be not buried before LM. If you like Glickenhaus instead you should not troll this thread, go there instead and root for your team.

No, I'm not an engineer nor a racing driver. I can only draw from my simracing experience, some at international level. Mostly endurance and historics. That includes several N24s and LM24s for which there's a trophy in my cabinet. And we never had a crash at Mulsanne. At worst you lose a bit of time getting back on the road. Sure, you can be unlucky and get stuck. But if you lock the fronts in Indianapolis there's very little room to save it, and if you lock the rears it's an airplane accident situation. So I merely pointed out that Toyota's braking issues are more likely to cause problems in that corner. And also that an awd kers with brake by wire is a nightmare to get absolutely right, so drivers feel 100% confident, compared to a conventional braking system. It's not exactly a secret.

[TF110]

From chatter around the internet theres speculation it may be the brake by wire system giving Toyota the fits. Some of the Japanese media are repeating the Toyota burned at Fuji but they forget that the GR010 NEVER tested outside Europe. I don't know anything about the details but Im seeing talk on this forum about a joker upgrade? Thatd be interesting!

[Pandamasque]

Originally Posted by TF110

From chatter around the internet theres speculation it may be the brake by wire system giving Toyota the fits. Some of the Japanese media are repeating the Toyota burned at Fuji but they forget that the GR010 NEVER tested outside Europe. I don't know anything about the details but Im seeing talk on this forum about a joker upgrade? Thatd be interesting!

Maybe the Japanese media are talking about the prototype of the road car?

[Gingers4Justice]

As GG mentioned on the MP podcast, there is nothing stopping them homologating a new car altogether.

[AndrewCherry]

That raises an interesting question though, of a Ship of Theseus nature - what constitutes a new car? Could Glickenhaus, for example, slap a different wing and new lights on the 007, call it a 008 and re-homologate? I presume not, but it seems like a direction someone will explore at some point!

[Pandamasque]

Don't you have to go through the whole expensive process of getting everything certified, crash testing the tub etc. for it to be a formally new car? This is something even Audi/Porsche/Toyota didn't do every year even at the peak of LMP1 arms race.

Which brings us to: what is permissible to change for a joker/evo package?

[TF110]

I don't know what the new rules say, but I wonder if theres a performance clause? So maybe a team needs to say something about the car is hurting in an area in terms of performance and they can change that? Would have to go find a pdf of the rules again.

[Mike E]

19.1 Principles
A car Manufacturer may homologate a maximum of two cars during the five championship seasons (from January 2021
until December 2025) and both homologations will be valid until December 2025

19.1.1 Modifications to the original homologation may be done for the following reasons:
a) Safety, reliability, serviceability, end-of-commercialisation or cost saving
b) Performance

19.1.3 Modifications requested for performance reasons:
Must respect the following conditions:
• No more than 5 Evolution extensions (EVO jokers) per manufacturer allowed from January 2021 until
December 2025, regardless of the number of different homologations.
• An EVO joker equals whatever modification within the perimeter of each chapter of the relevant
homologation form.
• Requested according to the calendar set in Article 19.6.2.
• According to the applicable homologation procedure.
• Applications must provide all necessary supporting information including the targeted performance
improvement, its evolution and, if relevant, an updated datasheet.
• If the FIA/ACO is satisfied, in its absolute discretion, that these changes are acceptable and in line with the
BoP process, they will confirm to the manufacturer concerned that they may be carried out.