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Toyota Racing reveals updated TS030 Hybrid for 2013

Friday, February 22, 2013 14:52

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(Before It's News)

Toyota Racing unveiled the revised TS030 Hybrid car which will run in the Le Mans 24 Hours and the FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC) this season. The TS030 made its debut in the WEC in 2012, and notched up three victories in six races. Toyota Racing begins the first full test of the 2013-specification TS030 Hybrid at Paul Ricard in southern France tomorrow.

The team will again utilize the Toyota Hybrid System – Racing powertrain, developed exclusively for motorsport by Toyota’s Motor Sport Division in Higashifuji. A supercapacitor-based hybrid system delivers 300 hp (224 kW) of boost automatically, on top of the 530 hp (395 hp) generated by a 3.4-liter, normally-aspirated V8 gasoline engine.

Ahead of a completely new development for 2014 due to regulation changes, Toyota’s Motor Sport Division in Higashifuji has fine-tuned this year’s powertrain to improve power, efficiency, management of component usage and reliability.

A revised aerodynamic package, including an updated monocoque, will deliver improved performance whilst minimizing the impact of updated regulations in 2013 which increase the minimum weight for manufacturer LMP1 cars by 15 kg (33 lbs).

“There is a major regulation change in 2014 so this year’s car has to be an evolution of our initial concept,” said Pascal Vasselon, Technical Director of Toyota Racing. ”The obvious target is to fix all the little issues we have found during the last season. 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.”