Two Hypercars
This year’s championship features the team Toyota Gazoo Racing numerically inferior to direct rivals such as Ferrari and Porsche: while the Maranello company has added a third 499P managed by the AF Corse satellite team, the Stuttgart company is even present with five 963s, between the official team and its own customer teams.
No expansion
Toyota, as well as BMW, Alpine and Peugeot, is present with its two GR010 Hybrids, but the expansion of the opposing teams had pushed the Japanese to seriously evaluate the addition of a third car for 2025, as team director Rob Leupen admitted at the beginning of the year. However, the deadline for making its plan official expired at the end of May, with Toyota having decided to hit the track next year still with two cars.
The reasons
But why did Toyota scrap its team expansion project? The answer was given to sportscar365 the team principal Kamui Kobayashiwhich highlighted the main obstacles facing another hypercar: “There are many things to do – has explained – who will be the drivers, who will manage the car, who will bring the budget? We also need to consider why we need to put a third car on the grid; What explanation should you give to the board of directors? This is the main point. Increasing the number of cars means increasing the budget and hiring more people. We need mechanics, engineers. If something goes wrong, the risk is greater; the damage is greater. It’s a question of organization. It’s easy to say we want a third car, but doing so is a big decision. We are not dreaming. It’s not that easy – also based on the pilots issue – we have to develop other drivers and now we have the GT3 project. We also need to think about what will happen if we have to reduce the number of cars in the future. It’s easy to say you want a third car if you don’t think too seriously.”
Car to customer teams?
Kobayashi, in addition, admitted other reasons that go beyond the single sporting issue: “Wanting to beat Ferrari is not a good enough reason, to be honest – he added – It’s all about winning. It takes a lot of effort. Ferrari is doing a great job, because they are selling Hypercar to owners of Ferrari, the track day car. We don’t have the ability to do itso it’s a completely different story.”. In conclusion, Leupen explained the reasons why Toyota denied the possibility of selling its cars to customer teams: “It has to be part of our philosophy. “We don’t want to just give a car to a customer. It must be in line with what we want to do and with our way of operating“.
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