Toyota to enter Le Mans 24 Hour

Toyota has today announced it will enter several races of the 2012 FIA World Endurance Championship, including the famous Le Mans 24 Hours race.

Under the Toyota Motorsports GmbH banner, it will use an LMP1 prototype chassis which will utilize a petrol-electric hybrid system, rather than diesel like Audi and Peugeot prefer to use.

The hybrid system will be built in Japan by Toyota Motor Corporation, while TMG supplies the chassis, which is created in Cologne, Germany which is where the team will be based.

TMG Chairman and Toyota Motor Corporation senior managing officer, Tadashi Yamashina, today thanked the FIA for its co-operation and acknowledged the road ahead will be unchartered territory for the company.

“Toyota Motor Corporation has entered Le Mans before but by using our hybrid technology this time will be a completely new challenge,” he said.

“We want to write a new page in the history of the Le Mans 24 Hours, as well as in the FIA World Endurance Championship, through our use of hybrid technology,” said Yamashina-san. “In addition, we aim to learn from the experience of competing in such a challenging motorsport environment to enhance our production car technology.”