The never ending Toyota return to Le Mans (LMP1) Saga

[avvelenamento]

BTW avvelenamento not avvallanamento. Italian translation for poisoning.

[Aysedasi]

Ah. Glad you pointed that one out.......

And that you reminded us all of the Toyota/TMG budget situation. Good to see that issue get another airing.........

[avvelenamento]

Don't surrender to boredom my friend, hang in there until sunday evening and you will see swarm in this topic every kind of post to comment the race. Let's give some good time to our friend Aysedasi

[Aysedasi]

Oh, no surrender here for sure - I'm keen for the race to produce all kinds of exciting and diverse subjects and comments - I just don't particularly want to know how much it is or isn't or should or shouldn't be costing Toyota......

[avvelenamento]

Only time will tell this.
Little offtopic (is noyance a synonymous of boredom? or is an not existent word that don't know how came in my mind)

[Aysedasi]

They can go together. (annoyance/boredom).

They do in this instance.


Back to topic.....

[TF110]

The 2012 Toyota was not that far off ultimate pace at Silveretone. Fastest laps show less than half a second difference (gap was inflated with tire choice). The 2013 car with the high downforce should at least be as quick on this track as the 2012 version. Then they have the 73 liter tank to help go further in a stint also. It should be a close(r) race.

[chernaudi]

Only problem is (if it was read/translated correctly earlier in this thread) is that Toyota reportedly are reducing engine power for the remaining rounds, certainly for Brazil. To me, that seems counter intuitive. The car survived LM well enough, especially the #8--worst issue it had was a piece of padding on the drivers' door coming loose. The #7 had the fuel pump issue, but that's why Audi and Toyota fit their cars with redundant systems, so no major issue there, just a delay to switch over pumps or ignition systems (or whatever had to by cycled and activated).

Aside from LM last year, the engine has not been one of Toyota's problems. I actually haven't heard of them having any serious engine issues since LM last year. So turning down the wick seems odd for sure here.

Either, TMG are short on engines/spares for them, which if the 2014 engine is derived from the RV8K family (as is alleged), I can't see the problem there.

Or, most likely, TMG did some simulations that show that playing the fuel mileage card is their best chance of making inroads against Audi in Brazil. Problem is, so far this year, the fuel mileage deal hasn't really worked out anywhere, and Audi probably can guess at how much faster (worst case scenario) they have to go and what tire strategy they have to work to build up a lead that can cancel out time lost for an extra stop late in the race.

Bad thing is that Audi probably know that if their car has about a 1:00 lead late in the race around that time, Toyota are cooked no matter how good they are. And if they can lap the Toyota, barring any issues for Audi, Toyota are out of it.

This does depend, however, on how much faster the sprint package makes the TS030/how much faster Audi are relative to that. I'm betting that if Audi on average is typically about .5 of a second faster, barring issues, that'll be a huge hole that Toyota have to dig themselves out of.

The faster that Toyota can do to mitigate the damage, the better off they'll be. So, naturally, them (allegedly) reducing engine power seems to go against what they should be doing, unless it nets them a useful gain elsewhere.

Problem is that Audi have adopted a "best defense is a good offense" strategy like Toyota did last year. And so far, the "offensive defense" strategy has paid off for Audi just as well or better than it did for Toyota last year. Toyota showed Audi exactly what they have/had to deal with, and they've basically used Toyota's own strategy against them this year.

In a way, Toyota this season have been a victim of the success that they had and, after all the hell TMG went though, deserved, last season.

[Bandicoot17]

The translation said they were sacrificing reliability by turning the engine up

[chernaudi]

Someone here did say that Toyota was turning down engine power for some reason (reliability or fuel economy).

Now that adds a new variable--how much more fuel will/may Toyota burn compared to LM and how will that effect them trying to take advantage of the extra 3 liters of fuel? At LM, they were able to do 12 lap stints, but not routinely, so that means that if Toyota had enough fuel to go say 3/4 or 7/8 of a lap around LM, that gives them an extra range of 6-7 miles just to venture an estimate. That would equal about 2-3 laps around the shorter tracks left on the schedule, and 1-2 laps on the longer tracks.

However, with draggier bodywork and trying to bump up power, how will that advantage suffer?

[TF110]

Audi did the same thing. Didn't turn out so bad for them.

[chernaudi]

Problem is how much speed can Toyota gain? The higher downforce bodywork is a bit of a trade off itself. With the LM bodywork, at Spa at least, they could match Audi for top speed, but were harder on their tires due to a lack of grip. With the higher downforce bodywork, they'll probably corner better (easy to assume), but they'll lose out on top speed.

The latter has been a big issue for Toyota this year, especially at LM and with the 2012 cars at Silverstone and Spa. Higher top speeds do make it easier to work though traffic. Problem is that Audi constantly have the extra torque to carry more downforce and have a high top speed. Toyota can only count on having that much torque to push the extra downforce when they can use their hybrid system.

Fuel mileage is the only card that Toyota have to play in the game of top trumps against Audi right now. It depends on how much speed they can gain by burning up more fuel. If they can keep closer to the tails of the R18s by trying to use more power, it might be a worth while gain.

The issue is how big of a lead would one or both Audis have before they make their final splash at the end. Depending on how long the stops will take, and how fast Audi and Toyota are relative to each other, that's the factors to be considered. A fuel only stop for a LMP1 takes on average about 30 seconds, and Interlogos has one of the longest pit roads in the WEC (2012 configuration--I know that a new pit road is supposed to be built at least for F1 on the other long straight after the Senna chicane). If Audi have to take on nearly a full fuel load and it's about a 30 second run down pit road, Audi would have to have nearly a 1 minute lead over Toyota to come out of the pits in front.

Of course, that's assuming taking on a full fuel load, which may or may not happen given circumstances, namely how late the final stop would be, but that is the worst case scenario.

[TF110]

All these questions will be answered in 3 days. They stand in a good position imo. Interlagos is not Spa for starters and Toyota wasn't alone with tire issues at Spa. So I don't get your point. You assume Toyota can't match Audi on pace but we haven't even seen them turn a lap Thats why patience is your friend.

Heres a great shot from the garage-

[MyNameIsNigel]

Originally Posted by TF110

Heres a great shot from the garage-

So they have reverted back to the old air box design apparently.

[TF110]

Not reverted, the #8 had this design at LeMans.

[MyNameIsNigel]

Originally Posted by TF110

Not reverted, the #8 had this design at LeMans.

Well I know that. I was referring to the fact that it's not the same air box design that they last tested at the Lausitzring as shown in the Motorvision video.

It could well be that they used the #7 chassis for the Lausitzring tests and shipped the #8 chassis to Sao Paulo.

This being said, I again find it a bit strange that Toyota are apparently still undecided as to which air box design to use. It was already strange at LM. It still is.

[avvelenamento]

interlagos 2012 scenario was very different. Toyota was a bit faster than audi (who used the e-tron only for #1) but had worse fuel miliage, being forced to make a last splash and go. The real deal for toyota was the tyre wear, they could do 3 stints with the same tyres without issues, audi barely could do 2 struggling a lot. This year audi will be forced to make at least 2 more refuel than toyota, but if #1 and #2 will gain 60- >60 seconds in first 2 hours, I think that the race is basicly over for toyota. Anyway right now we can't predict factors like wear rate, reliability issues and on...

[gwyllion]

Vasselon is downplaying the expectations for the remainders of the WEC season:

Toyota Motorsport GmbH technical director Pascal Vasselon told AUTOSPORT it would be unfair on his team to burden it with the target of winning races over the five events of the second leg of the WEC, which begins this weekend at Interlagos in Brazil.

Toyota says expecting WEC race wins unfair given Audi's form (autosport.com)

[MyNameIsNigel]

Originally Posted by gwyllion

Vasselon is downplaying the expectations for the remainders of the WEC season:
Toyota says expecting WEC race wins unfair given Audi's form (autosport.com)

Sounds depressing...

[gwyllion]

Clearly they prefer the underdog position.

[Gingers4Justice]

They're taking on Audi with one car for 30 more hours of racing. I'm sure his team are feeling the pressure. I think this is Vasselon being a good leader of people, by trying to manage expectations.

[Maelochs]

Vaselon playing the press. If Toyota wins, they slew the giant; if they lose, they struggled bravely against unfair advantages.

[Bubak]

So, gentlemans, here it is: 2013 TS030 car for Brazil! https://twitter.com/Toyota_Hybrid/st...04246972895232

[TF110]

Its a realistic approach. Audi has an advantage still. The fuel allocation will help but they're still down on power.

That picture makes me wish that the body height rules for the cars were loosened. The black asphalt gives an appearance that there are side skirts on the car, how much better would these cars look with those!

[TF110]

Nice picture here, lights look close to the Lola P1's.