MOTORSPORT: Toyota dominates Le Mans qualifying

Toyota driver Kamui Kobayashi has smashed the lap record to lead a 1-2 qualifying result at Le Mans ahead of this weekend 24-hour race.

Kobayashi, sharing the number seven Toyota TS050 hybrid racer with Mike Conway and Stephane Sarrazin, set a benchmark time of 3:14.791.

Kazuki Nakajima, lead driver in the number eight TS050 was second-fastest with a time of 3:17.128 to give Toyota a lockout of the front row for the world’s greatest sports car race. The number nine Toyota, piloted by lead driver Nicolas Lapierre will start fifth.

Best of the Porsche 919s in qualifying was the number one car with Neel Jani at the wheel – Jani’s best time of 3:17.159 was 2.468sec down on the pole-sitting Toyota.

It’s a terrific start for Toyota’s factory sports car team, a year on from the most savage of its many Le Mans heartbreaks. This will be Toyota’s 19th tilt at a maiden victory in the iconic 24 hour race.

Ironically, Toyota’s only real rival this year in the top-level prototype class is Porsche and the German giant is chasing victory number 19 and three in a row.

The three Toyota TS050s are running new 2.4-litre, twin-turbocharged V6 engines with an upgraded hybrid system – highlighted by with lighter and smaller motor generator units – which recover and deploy 8 megajoules of electrical energy each lap of the 13.629km Circuit de la Sarthe (more than 9km of which comprises normally public roads).

Porsche is running only two of its 919s powered by a compact 2-litre turbocharged V4 engine with two different energy recover systems – brake energy from the front axle combined with exhaust energy.

Porsche stablemate Audi, the most successful brand at Le Mans this century, is gone (as it is from the World Rally Championship) as part of the damage control from the Volkswagen group’s ‘dieselgate’ saga.

And Porsche this week has been fending off suggestions that it too will withdraw from Le Mans and the wider World Endurance Championship at the end of this season, partly over concerns about the future of sports car endurance racing.

New rules for 2020 and beyond are to be announced on the eve of the race, but French brand Peugeot – thought to have been the most likely next LMP1 entrant - is believed to have been deterred by the potential cost. Australians Geoff and David Brabham famously won the Le Mans classic driving for Peugeot.

As well as the massive efforts from Toyota and Porsche, there is a sixth LMP1 entry this year – from the Austrian-Romanian ByKolles Racing – but it runs without hybrid power.

At Le Mans 12 months ago, emotions boiled over in the normally stoic Toyota garage when a tiny turbocharger malfunction, as its lead car was about to start its final lap, thwarted the first victory it so badly wants.

Toyota has finished second five times and, ironically, Mazda is the only Japanese brand to stand on the top step of the podium (in 1991).

This year’s running – from late Saturday night until late Sunday night, eastern Australian time - will be the 85th edition of the twice-around-the-clock classic. Toyota first entered in 1985 and has been back there since 2012.

So far this year, Toyota has won the two lead-in races in the World Endurance Championship (WEC) – at Silverstone in Britain and Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium – and the dominant showing in qualifying underscores its pre-race favouritism for Le Mans.

“We all remember what happened [at Le Mans] last year, but that is in the past,” says Toyota team president Toshio Sato. “Now we are focused only on this year’s race.

“Le Mans is the highlight of our season and has been focus of a huge team effort in Higashi-Fuji (Toyota’s test centre in Japan) and Cologne (the German base for its motorsport operations).”

Perhaps more than any other WEC event, the manufacturers are the stars at Le Mans but of course the drivers – 180 of them in 60 cars across four classes – are all top-notch.

Each of the three Toyotas entries has a Japanese driver, while Argentinian triple world touring car champion Jose Maria Lopez is the notable newcomer in that squad.

Briton Anthony Davidson, a stalwart of Toyota’s sports car racing program, says: “You can never come to Le Mans confident. Like we proved last year, anything really can happen. You’ve got to expect the unexpected.”

Porsche’s two LMP1s include two New Zealand drivers – Earl Bamber, victor in a third Porsche 919 entry two years ago, and Brendon Hartley. Unfortunately Hartley’s qualifying was halted when he parked out at the Indianapolis corner with a rising oil temperature display.

There is no Australian in either of the prototype classes, but American-based Sydneysider Ryan Briscoe is in one of the four Ford GTs defending the Blue Oval’s title in the GTE Pro class and will start fifth in that category. However balance-of-performance adjustments in that class – which can be made by the organisers right up until the start of the race – threaten a repeat victory for Ford.

Porsche is debuting two of its latest 911 RSRs – with the flat-six motor mounted ahead of the rear axle – in GTE Pro against the Fords, Ferrari 488s, Chevrolet Corvette C7.Rs and Aston Martin Vantages.

The other Australian in the field this year is Nick Foster, the reigning national Porsche Carrera Cup champion who is now based in Europe. He’s driving a 2015-model Porsche 911 RSR (991) for Gulf Racing in GTE Am with Britons Ben Barker and Michael Wainwright.

Foster was a spectator at Le Mans last year and revealed he is: “really excited about being a part of the big show this year – it’s bigger than anything I’ve ever been part of.”

By the numbers, the French enduro will be telecast to 190 countries and more than 260,000 spectators will be trackside over the weekend.

Naturally the major focus will be on the LMP1 cars vying for outright honours.
Toyota team director Rob Leupen says having one more prototype than Porsche in the field should give the Japanese manufacturer greater flexibility with strategy in the race.

And according to Porsche team chief Andreas Seidl, the German outfit will be counting on its operational and strategic strength from being the most successful manufacturer in the event’s history. “We think we have a good race car, a consistent race car, so we will fight every single minute of this race,” Seidl explained.

Porsche vice-president Fritz Enzinger, who oversees the company’s Le Mans program, said: “You must never lose the respect for those 5000 kilometres [and more] covered day and night in changeable weather conditions and at speeds in excess of 330km/h (almost 335km/h on the Mulsanne Straight) while constantly overtaking and lapping competitors.”

While Porsche has proven so often it knows how to get the job done, and the Germans are the team Toyota must beat in order to conquer motor sport’s Mt Everest.