I don't know if this was posted before, but there is an
interesting interview of Anthony Davidson from Sportscar Global (carried out at Spa after qualifying) giving away some information about the upcoming LM-spec car:
Quote:
SCG Understood a Private Test is scheduled for Spa prior to Le Mans Test, do Toyota have lots of developments specifically for Le Mans ?
AD We have a completely different Aero package for that one race, its quite narrowly tuned for that one race, so we can’t do what Audi are doing here by running the Le Mans package, but at a high enough level to survive round Spa. Its specifically tuned for the one track and I think that is why we are struggling a bit here because we are a bit out of the band where we need to be, we need less drag, but our Le Mans package can’t go as high as we need here. Last year we could, and we were properly optimised for this track, but arguably we did not have enough straight-line speed at Le Mans, we were over-winged for Le Mans, and if you look at the rest of 2014 particularly this race we almost optimised this race more than Le Mans. So we may suffer here, but will be a bit closer at Le Mans.
If you are within about a second away on average race pace you’re certainly in the fight at Le Mans, particularly these days with reliability paramount, last year’s attrition rate every car had a mechanical problem at some point, and the more complex the cars become the higher the chances of that happening, more than ever its less focus on pure speed and more about reliability.
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So, expect a car that is specifically tailored to the LM track characteristics and, hopefully, with better performance and reliability.
We should possibly have a first look at the LM-spec car at the occasion of the upcoming Spa test on May 19th-20th.