Toyota TS050 LMP1 racer revealed

Toyota’s turned to turbo power for its stab at the 2016 World Endurance Championship.

Revealing full details on its all-new TS050 Hybrid racecar, the firm announced its LMP1 contender will be powered by a new 2.4-litre twin-turbo V6.

The new engine, which replaces the TS040’s 3.7-litre V8, is direct injected, split at 90 degrees, and accounts for half of the new car’s 736kW output.

Making up the other half of the car’s power is an upgraded hybrid unit which continues the TS040’s twin-axle setup that sees an electric motor power allocated one axle.

Energy will be drawn from lithium-ion batteries as opposed to the supercapacitors relied on last year, charged by motor-generators during braking, which sees the TS050 to move up to the 8-megajoule hybrid class.

Toyota says the transmission has been updated to handle increased torque but hasn’t revealed how much more twist the car produces.

Over 22,000km testing kilometres were put on the TS050 Hybrid design prior to the WEC season, but it's yet to be seen whether Toyota will match its competitors who severely outpaced the Japanese firm at last year’s Le Mans 24 Hours.

For what it's worth Toyota’s TS050 was 0.825sec slower around Paul Ricard than Porsche’s 919 Hybrid during official pre-season testing last month. However, it was almost six tenths faster than Audi’s R18 e-tron quattro.

Toyota will kick-off its assault on the full 2016 WEC season with two TS050 Hybrids at Silverstone on April 17. Anthony Davidson, Sébastien Buemi, and Kazuki Nakajima will drive the #5 car, while Stéphane Sarrazin, Mike Conway, and Kamui Kobayashi will pilot #6.