TOYOTA RACING TO DELAY SEASON DEBUT

TOYOTA Racing regrets to announce that, as a result of a testing accident, it is not able to participate in the WEC Six Hours of Spa-Francorchamps.

During testing at Paul Ricard, on Wednesday 4 April, the TS030 HYBRID was involved in an accident which damaged the team's only monocoque.

Regrettably this damage is too severe to repair. A replacement monocoque cannot be produced and sufficiently tested to ensure reliability within the limited time available.

Therefore TOYOTA Racing has informed the organizers of the FIA World Endurance Championship of its decision to withdraw from the WEC Six Hours of Spa-Francorchamps, due to be held on 5 May. The team will make its first appearance at the Le Mans 24 Hours in June.

Yoshiaki Kinoshita, TOYOTA Racing Team President:
"We are deeply saddened to announce this decision and our sympathies are with the drivers, team members and fans who have been anticipating the Spa race so eagerly. Since the accident we have looked into all options but unfortunately there is no alternative course of action open to us."

TOYOTA Racing will now urgently prepare a new monocoque to allow it to resume testing as soon as possible and prepare itself for the Le Mans 24 Hours.

Toyota revealed Tuesday an updated version of its TS030 Hybrid LMP1 challenger, which will fight for top honors in the 24 Hours of Le Mans and FIA World Endurance Championship this year.

Featuring a new monocoque and revised aerodynamics, the gasoline-powered hybrid prototype is considered more of an evolution for 2013, especially with new LMP1 regulations set to come into effect next year.

"The obvious target is to fix all the little issues we have found during the last season," explained Toyota Racing technical director Pascal Vasselon. "The very first one is that the 2012 car, being a laboratory car, was able to accept front and rear hybrid systems, so we have redesigned the monocoque to optimize it without the front motor.

"Last year’s performance was very satisfying and we felt we ticked most boxes so there has been no concept change, just refinement and optimization of the 2012 car."

The Japanese manufacturer impressed in its debut season with three victories in only six starts, including a win on home soil in Fuji with drivers Alex Wurz, Nicolas Lapierre and Kaz Nakajima.

All three will return to the No. 7 Toyota for this year, with plans to field a second full-season TS030 Hybrid for Stephane Sarrazin, Anthony Davidson and Sebastien Buemi now in place.

In addition to chassis and aero developments, updates have also been made to the super capacitor-based hybrid system, which delivers 300 hp of boost on top of the conventional 530 hp 3.4-liter powerplant.

"For this year we have achieved some incremental improvements while including some pre-testing of 2014 technologies," said Hisatake Murata, Hybrid Project Leader. "We have polished up things like power and efficiency whilst also fine-tuning the powertrain to enhance reliability. Overall we are confident we again have a very competitive and reliable powertrain."

The pair of updated Toyota TS030 Hybrids will go head-to-head with Audi in the global sports car championship, which kicks off at Silverstone in April.

"We took three out of six WEC races in 2012, and led Le Mans as well, so we showed not only potential, but solid results too," said Team President Yoshiaki Kinoshita. "As a team we made big progress last year; we are still developing as a team but we can be proud of our hard work and fast learning.

"I believe it is realistic to target both titles but it will certainly not be easy; clearly we face an extremely strong competitor. It is a big challenge to become number one. We have huge respect for Audi’s achievements and abilities, so we expect an exciting competition in WEC this year.

The revised car, unveiled during a press launch Tuesday at Paul Ricard, will begin its first full test at the High Tech Test Track tomorrow.