Quote:
Originally Posted by truebeliever
IF Toyota goes ahead with Hypercar, I will be extremely surprised! I do not see how they can possibly want to race in a series where there is no competition. The Japanese do strange things at times, but I would tend to believe that their pride alone says they cannot do this.
But who knows?
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They have literally said they are continuing with the car and have already started the build. They would not be saving any money to restart and build a DPi/LMDh car. Especially as that would not be ready for another 2 seasons, the tenders for the hybrid system have not even been offered. THE only options they have are 1) stop racing and lose the money they've invested already to build a car for 2022 at the earliest or 2) continue with their car and race in 2020 and 21. I don't believe they will be offered the option to run the current car so that's out. They can't build a car that doesn't exist yet so going DPi 2.0 isn't an option.
Now I do think we could possibly see the hypercar run for 20-21 and 21-22 seasons before the worldwide rollout of a shared Toyota/Lexus LMDh/DPi option. But Toyota does seem to be set against racing a spec system. Where else could they run though, F1 is almost spec for the powerunit with only small areas open and HIGH entry cost with other having years of lead time, FE doesn't appear to want more cars so they'd have to buy in, but they would be in when the regs are opening a bit, remaining series are mostly spec or limited development options. Plus they appear to have caught the Le Mans bug and do not want to leave.