Bruce Newton•27 Jun 2014
NEWS
MOTORSPORT: Toyota WRC decision in 2014
Yaris being tested as Japanese giant mulls return in 2017Toyota should decide by the end of 2014 whether it will return to the World Rally Championship.
The Japanese giant's motorsport specialist, Toyota Motorsport GmbH, is currently testing a Yaris WRC with rally team Motorsport Italia, but is funding that out of its own budget.
Toyota's global marketing and sales division in Japan is responsible for the company's worldwide motorsport strategy and will make the call on a potential return to WRC.
Citroen, Hyundai and Volkswagen currently contest the WRC as manufacturers with permanent four-wheel drive 1.6-litre turbo-petrol versions of the DS3, i20 and Polo respectively. Ford also has a strong privateer presence with the Fiesta.
A key factor in a decision for Toyota will be new technical rules for WRC cars that are currently being formulated and scheduled to be in place for 2017.
"The interest within Toyota Motor Corporation is big," TMG business development director Rob Leupen told Australia media last week at the company's Cologne HQ. "We talk about at the end of the year, then we will know if we continue this, yes or no."
TMG, previously known as Toyota Team Europe, ran Toyota's WRC attack throughout the 1970s, '80s and '90s, netting four drivers and three manufacturers' championships. Infamously, it was also banned from competition in 1995 when it was caught cheating.
TMG was also responsible for Toyota's unsuccessful venture in Formula One between 2002-2009, failing to net a single win.
Nowadays, it is responsible for the Toyota World Endurance Championship program with the TS040 LMP1, which leads the 2014 title race but missed out on the blue ribbon Le Mans 24 Hour race, with Audi scoring a 1-2.
Toyota has now staged 16 attacks on Le Mans and is yet to win. TMG has managed five of those assaults.
Leupen told Australian media during a roundtable at TMG's Cologne headquarters last week that it hoped WRC would be approved by Toyota and the WEC program continue.
"Toyota sales and marketing has to evaluate what we do and from our point of view we can do both," Leupen said. "And we can do both from here, we have a rally history, we have a Le Mans history. We understand the technology, we can build the cars here and on the rally side we can do the same.
"From our point of view it doesn't matter too much, we can do both."
Leupen said that even if Toyota doesn't approve a WRC program, the development work being put in could result in a customer car that could be sold in the catch-all WRC 2 class "for a pretty nice price and make a pretty good profit and support this organisation."
The WEC program is currently confirmed to the end of 2015, but Leupen said an extension was expected and work was already underway for 2016 and even 2017.
He said the Le Mans loss, which came after the team won the opening two six-hour rounds of the 2014 WEC, would probably mean extra budget from Toyota to allow the team to run a third TS040 at Le Mans.
Among the outright contending LMP1 manufacturer teams only Audi ran a third car at Le Mans, which proved crucial as Toyota's two cars were knocked out of contention by a crash and an electrical failure, the latter while leading in the 14th hour.
Leupen listed three reasons why a third car was an advantage in the 24-hour.
"First of all you might have had a third car finishing the race with no problems or with fewer problems than what we had. You increase your chances, you have more possibilities and potential to finish the race with a quick car than what we had.
"The second one is in case of accidents. We have one car more than what we had on race day this year.
"Thirdly, you can play more strategies, so you can support the other cars, you can back off. You can have two different strategies."
Pictures courtesy Toyota Yaris WRC/Facebook
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Written byBruce Newton
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