Why a fifth Toyota win at Le Mans is far from a certainty in 2022

Toyota has only triumphed in one of the two World Endurance Championship rounds so far this season. What’s more, it has only got a single car to the finish on both occasions.

Yet the Japanese manufacturer still has to be favourite going into the Le Mans 24 Hours this weekend. Of course it does: it runs the only current overt manufacturer programme in the Hypercar class, it has the form at the centrepiece round of the series as it bids for a fifth victory in a row, and it has the best driver line-ups. 

All those reasons stood last year, too, when the GR010 HYBRID Le Mans Hypercar finished 1-2 on the Circuit de la Sarthe in the first Le Mans of the new world order of sportscar racing. But any bookmaker with a keen eye on the WEC would surely give longer odds on the Japanese manufacturer this time around. There are multiple reasons for that. 

The opposition in the Hypercar class, unchanged from last year, has proved its credentials. Alpine’s grandfathered LMP1 ORECA design was already a proven machine with two WEC campaigns under its belt as the Rebellion R-13. But the Glickenhaus-Pipo 007 LMH remained an unknown quantity when the WEC arrived at Le Mans for last year’s delayed running of the 24 Hours in August. Getting two cars to the finish in fourth and fifth positions and mounting a real challenge to the Alpine for the final spot on the podium showed that the team was not the joke that some, if not many, had been predicting.

But the odds have also lengthened on Toyota for the 90th running of the 24 Hours because the playing field has changed 10 months on from the GR010’s debut victory at the French enduro. Revisions to the Balance of Performance system have brought the cars in Hypercar closer together for the new season. They are revisions that Toyota has agreed to for the good of sportscar racing.

PLUS: Why Toyota's 2021 Le Mans victory was not as simple as it looked

“We all want to have a proper race,” says Toyota Gazoo Racing Europe technical director Pascal Vasselon. “That is the target of the BoP.”

Changes have been made to the Toyota, which is now racing with different-sized Michelin tyres at each corner, across the board since last year: its LMH is heavier, and has less power to the tune of nine kilowatts (or 12bhp). The deployment speed of its front-axle hybrid system has been raised, and dramatically so, and it also is allowed to consume less energy over a stint. 

The Toyota GR010 HYBRID is running heavier this year, has less power, and crucially can't deploy power from its front axle until it reaches 190km/h

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

The GR010 is four kilograms heavier than at Le Mans last year: that slows the car by just over 0.1 seconds over the track’s eight and a half miles, reckons Vasselon. He won’t put figures on what exactly accounts for what, but he says that the one-second deficit – in terms of an ideal lap based on fastest sectors – at the Le Mans test day last weekend compared to the 2021 test day was in line with the team’s simulations. 

“We were expecting to be slower than last year, because clearly the BoP has slowed us down,” he said on Sunday night. “We knew we couldn’t do the lap time from last year.”

The hybrid deployment speed has been moved into the BoP from last season; that was a key tenet in the convergence process designed to create a level playing field between four-wheel-drive LMHs and the forthcoming LMDh rear-axle prototypes, as well the rear-drive Glickenhaus.

"We cannot deny that. We are favourites, but we know we have some very serious competitors" Pascal Vasselon

The effect of all-wheel-drive has been largely removed following an increase in that speed from 120km/h in the dry and 150km/h in the wet, defined by the car running on grooved rubber. It now stands for the Toyota at 190km/h in all conditions, though it can change from race to race and from car to car — the forthcoming Peugeot is also four-wheel-drive, remember.

“Per kilometre the effect is a bit smaller than other tracks,” Vasselon says of Le Mans. 

But there has to be an argument that four-wheel drive gave the Toyota a massive advantage at Le Mans in 2021. The race started in the wet and the Toyotas pulled a big advantage over their rivals in the mixed conditions of the first half of the event when the track wasn’t always wet, but was definitely low grip after the rain and 62 cars running on grooved tyres had cleaned the surface of the rubber that had been laid down over the previous week. 

Vasselon doesn’t agree that the Toyotas’ advantage over the first 12 hours was a result of traction at all four corners. He puts it down to tyre choice and driver skill. 

“The four-wheel drive probably helped, but in this kind of situation you have to be on the right tyre and then it is down to the drivers,” he says. “If I was ranking these factors I would say that driver skill was most important. I would say that in these kind of transition conditions our drivers are good, and they are trained to be good. 

The #8 Toyota was halted at Spa by a hybrid problem, but Vasselon argues it was a one-off issue

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

“When there is a wet track during practice in the WEC we don’t stay in the pits; our drivers are out on track. You take a risk by running in tricky conditions, but it pays you back, especially at a place like Le Mans.”

Toyota had to overcome fuel-pressure problems last year from Sunday morning on. And it did so by some ingenious fixes that included the drivers having to turn the engine off and back on under braking with increasing regularity. The issue was caused by grease from the refuelling nozzle mixing with polyurethane particles from the insides of the fuel bladders, which were collapsing because the breathing systems on the tanks were insufficient. 

PLUS: The remarkable fixes Toyota used to avert another Le Mans disaster

It backs up Vasselon’s contention that the issues to worry about for a team like Toyota are “the ones that haven’t popped up yet”. One that did occur at the Spa WEC round in May shouldn’t be a problem again. The hybrid system failure on the #8 car in Belgium was the result, he says, of a “one-off quality issue” with the converter that reduces the voltage between the battery and the motor generator unit. It wasn’t a fundamental problem, he says, because Toyota has been using the same technology since 2016 without issue.

There’s a new driver at Toyota this year. Ryo Hirakawa has joined the #8 car alongside Sebastien Buemi and Brendon Hartley in place of Kazuki Nakajima, who has segued into a management role at Toyota Gazoo Racing Europe: he’s now vice-president and is based in Cologne. Vasselon doesn’t believe that the presence of a driver with only two Le Mans under his belt – and back in 2016 and 2017 –  will in any way blunt or somehow destabilise Toyota’s challenge. Hirakawa proved that in round one of the 2022 WEC at Sebring in March.

“A track like Sebring is typically a track where he could have been off the pace, but he was not off the pace,” says Vasselon. “With everything that happened, with rain and safety cars and red flags, it could have been a difficult race for him, but actually he handled the pressure very well.”

Vasselon does admit that Toyota is the favourite. It comes with the territory, he reckons. 

“We cannot deny that,” he says. “We are favourites, but we know we have some very serious competitors.”

Glickenhaus is no joke

Glickenhaus heads into Le Mans believing it has a firm chance of winning

Photo by: Marc Fleury

Glickenhaus has repeatedly proved since it joined the sportscar racing big time at round two of the 2021 WEC at the Algarve circuit that it’s a genuine player. Or as one team member put it, “we’re not another ByKolles”. That’s a reference to the German-based team that raced without distinction in the WEC for much of the LMP1 era.

The 007 LMH powered by V8 powerplant developed by Pipo Moteurs in France has slowly been ticking the boxes since its arrival in the WEC last June. It has led racing laps (from as early as its second appearance at Monza in July), it’s got two cars to the finish at Le Mans, and claimed a podium at Sebring this year and then at Spa took pole position and headed the early running.

It focused on development of the car within the restraints of the LMH homologation rules over the winter rather than racking up the test miles. It has introduced a brake by wire system for the rear axle after a regulations change for the new season and had a real push on the ergonomics of the car.

"If you were a betting man, you’d look at Glickenhaus and Toyota and say why should someone like us who builds as many road cars in two years as they do in five minutes have a chance? But what we have now is a fair BoP; that’s all I ever asked for" Jim Glickenhaus

Pla lost the lead to the #7 Toyota after 15 laps in Belgium, and the #8 car quickly followed it through, as the Glickenhaus’s his Michelin tyres went away. The team has explained that this was caused by a rear brake duct clogged with track debris, which caused the tyre on that corner to overheat and unbalance the car.

PLUS: How Toyota’s sole survivor turned the tables at Spa

Glickenhaus reckons that its car and the team is now in the position to fight for victory in the big one.

“Why shouldn’t we go into the race believing we can win?” says team founder Jim Glickenhaus, the former director of cult movies who had the dream of building his own car to take to Le Mans. “That’s why you go racing, and we won’t go down easily.

“If you were a betting man, you’d look at Glickenhaus and Toyota and say why should someone like us who builds as many road cars in two years as they do in five minutes have a chance? But what we have now is a fair BoP; that’s all I ever asked for so that we have a chance.”

Glickenhaus believes the shift of hybrid deployment speed for all-wheel-drive LMHs has been crucial in that.

Jim Glickenhaus's outfit spent the winter focused on improving its car within the confines of its homologation, including making the cockpit more ergonomic

Photo by: Paul Foster

“I didn’t say I wanted 190km/h, I just said that having a four-wheel-drive cars shouldn’t come with a massive advantage,” he explains. “I have great respect for what the Automobile Club de l'Ouest and the FIA [who jointly set the rules for the WEC] have done,” says Glickenhaus. “They’ve looked at all the data and come up with what I believe is a fair BoP.”

Glickenhaus goes on to say that the 007 developed in Italy by Podium Advanced Technologies is also a more raceable car than last August.

“The guys at Podium have done an amazing job optimising our car,” he explained. “The one thing you can say about Luca [Ciancetti, who heads up the LMH programme at Podium] is that for seven days a week for the past year he has done nothing but make our car better, make it easier to drive and make it more serviceable.”

He explained that the ergonomics of the cockpit of the Glickenhaus have been one key area of improvement since 2021: “If you make the cockpit more comfortable, then it will be easier to drive it faster for longer.”

Glickenhaus and Ciancetti also point to improvements within the team structure, which incorporates personnel from the multiple Le Mans-winning Joest Racing squad.

“Last year our pitwork wasn’t up to standard, so we have put an enormous amount of effort into that,” says Glickenhaus. “We have made it better, and we did an enormous number of practices during the test day last weekend.”

Ciancetti explained that the team will be tactically stronger this year, too. “Better prepared from a strategy point of view,” is how he puts it.

As for the reliability of the Glickenhaus, he points to the design’s impressive finishing record in the WEC: “We have had only one retirement for the car so far in the programme [at Monza last year], so we can say we have done our work well. Le Mans is the most important race of the year and we are doing our best to be ready to fight.”

Alpine's balancing act

The Alpine is well-proven, but has been hampered by a lack of straightline speed

Photo by: Marc Fleury

Alpine scored its first big sportscar win since Le Mans 1978 and the Renault-powered A442B Group 6 prototype shared by Didier Pironi and Jean-Pierre Jaussaud at the Sebring 1000 Miles in March. That’s not counting victories by the Signatech-run squad with LMP2 machinery in the European Le Mans Series in 2013 and 2014. But team boss Philippe Sinault said at Spa “the season starts here”.

That’s a reference to the sheer pace advantage enjoyed by the team’s ORECA old LMP1 design around the bumpy Sebring International Raceway and its largely-concrete surface. This throwback of a race track meant a car that’s lighter and has more downforce than its LMH rivals was in the ascendency.

PLUS: How WEC got off to a stormy start in 2022 as rulemakers dampen Toyota's dominance

Alpine couldn’t match Toyota and Glickenhaus at Spa after a BoP change that robbed it of more than 26bhp (20kW was the figure in the official table). It got half of that back ahead of last weekend’s Le Mans test day, but the Alpine is still running with 40bhp (30kW) less than at Le Mans last year.

It would be non-sensical put an old LMP1 car on a par with an LMH. The ACO has talked about a desire for the Alpine to be “in the window” without explaining exactly what that means

The A480 ended up two seconds slower during the test day than at the same point of the 24 Hours meeting in 2021. The latest Le Mans BoP has resulted in a significant decrease in straightline speed. The team reckons it’s now consistently 10km/h or so down on its LMH rivals.

That’s going to have an effect on the raceability of the car. Alpine driver Andre Negrao explains that the reduced power made it difficult to pass the LMP2 cars on the straights: “It is really hard for us to overtake the P2s, whereas a Toyota or a Glickenhaus can go straight past. That’s going to make a huge difference in the race.”

Sinault has refused to criticise the BoP. That’s not his style.

“We are now 10km/h down [on the Toyota and Glickenhaus Le Mans Hypercars]; that is a consequence of less power,” he said in the wake of Sunday’s test. “We have to work on it; we have to improve. I don’t want to complain, that would show a lack of humility,” he said.

It's unclear whether the Alpine will get a BoP boost, and to what degree the organising body wants a grandfathered LMP1 car to be on the pace of newer cars designed for the Hypercar rules

Photo by: Marc Fleury

But he added that he believed that the rule makers, the ACO and FIA, would make a change if it is necessary to balance the playing field.

“If the gap is too big, I don’t have to discuss it,” he said. “They will consider the subject if there is evidence that it [the BoP] is not correct.”

What isn’t entirely clear is whether there can be a new Hypercar BoP this week. The document that governs the process in Hypercar is not in the public domain, but it is known that there is no provision for changes between qualifying and the race. That said, there have been so-called black ball changes outside of the prescribed processes to the BoP in GTE, most famously ahead of the first of the two Bahrain rounds that closed out the WEC last year. Ferrari, if you remember, was hit with a draconian power reduction.

What we don’t know is how competitive the ACO and the FIA want the Alpine to be. Grandfathering is all out extending the life of otherwise obsolete machinery in the name of boosting grid numbers. The generally held principle is that the older cars should somehow be there or thereabouts, ready and waiting to pick up the pieces if the new-generation of cars hit problems. It would be non-sensical put an old LMP1 car on a par with an LMH. The ACO has talked about a desire for the Alpine to be “in the window” without explaining exactly what that means.

But the BoP has given something to Alpine for this year. Last year, the A480 could go 12 laps between stops courtesy an increase of fuel capacity of a car that, we are told, still can’t accommodate the full amount of energy allocated to it and some heavy-duty fuel saving on the part of the drivers.

The problem was that Toyota and Glickenhaus regularly made it to 13, one more than the target laid down in the LMH regs. That led to a realignment of the maximum energy figures allowed to the cars for the six and eight-hour races in Bahrain late last year.

The GR010 and 007 will be going 12 laps between pitstops in the 24 Hours this year, and Sinault reckons with this will be just about be doable for the Alpine even with its own reduced energy allocation. He was, however, holding a finger to his throat when he made that comment.

One thing we do know for sure is that the A480 is a reliable contender. The ORECA chassis is a proven design now going into its fifth Le Mans, three as a Rebellion and now two as the Alpine.

The LMP2 question

It appears unlikely that an LMP2 car will challenge for outright honours, unless major disaster strikes all of the Hypercar runners

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

Can an LMP2 win the Le Mans 24 Hours outright? That was arguably a more pertinent question last year when the LMH machinery was brand new. The fact that the five entries in the Hypercar class made it to the finish in the top five positions last year suggests that a freak victory by one of the secondary prototypes is unlikely this time around.

But that’s to underplay the challenge of making it to the finish of the 24 hours at Le Mans. Don’t forget that back in 2017, a year when there were five big-buck factory LMP1 cars from Porsche and Toyota, an LMP2 car came home second overall. More to the point, the Jota-run Jackie Chan DC Racing ORECA led overall for the better part of two hours until just over 60 minutes to go.

A similar set of circumstances would be required at Le Mans for an LMP2 car to win this time around. But remember racing cars do break down (witness the #8 Toyota’s Spa retirement) and their drivers occasionally crash them (witness Jose Maria Lopez putting the #7 car on its roof at Sebring).

The LMP2s have been further slowed since Le Mans last year. They’ve lost a bit of power and a bit of an aero, and will be pitting more frequently thanks to a 10-litre decrease in fuel capacity

But even if there are times when a well-driven LMP2 car is on the pace of a car from the Hypercar class, witness Robin Frijns’ charge in the wet at the Spa aboard his WRT ORECA-Gibson 07, they aren’t consistently fast enough to challenge on track where the LMH machinery can stretch its legs on four long straights.

“Even last year when some people were saying a P2 could do something overall, we weren’t thinking beyond trying to win our class,” says United Autosports boss Richard Dean. “It’s a tough enough race anyway and P2 is so competitive that it’s not worth even thinking about.”

Nor should we forget that the LMP2s have been further slowed since Le Mans last year. They’ve lost a bit of power and a bit of an aero, and will be pitting more frequently thanks to a 10-litre decrease in fuel capacity. The new 65-litre maximum puts the cars on the cusp of reaching 10 laps on a tank of fuel. If they can’t hit that figure, they will be stopping every nine laps.

Why no Peugeot?

We'll have to wait until the Monza WEC round next month to see the new Peugeot 9x8 in action

Photo by: Peugeot Sport

The wait for Peugeot’s debut in the modern WEC goes on. The winner of the three Le Mans crowns, two with the 905 3.5-litre Group C car, one with the 908 LMP1 turbodiesel, opted against racing its avant-garde 9X8 LMH in the French enduro this year. It was erroneously billed as a delay in some quarters, but the truth is that it was merely sticking to its original schedule.

PLUS: The wingless wonder Peugeot hopes will restore it to Le Mans glory

There was a desire to be at Le Mans for the first time since 2011 and its near miss — by just 13s — with the second-iteration of the 908, but it was just that. A wish rather than a confirmed intent. When the wingless 9X8 does make its debut at the Monza round of this year’s WEC in July, it will be more or less on the original timeline for the car laid down when the French manufacturer announced its intention to return to the top flight of international sportscar racing in November 2019.

Back then, the WEC was meant to be running to the aborted winter-series format, with a late-summer start and a climax at Le Mans in mid-June. COVID delayed the finish of the first season due to run to this schedule in 2019/20 and left the WEC with no choice but to switch back to a conventional calendar for 2021.

Peugeot, on its big announcement, committed to joining the WEC at the start of what would have been the 2022/23 season. That would have meant a September debut for the 9X8, though the marque didn’t rule out bringing the first race forward to late in the previous season. It was still trying to advance its plans when it began track testing of the car in January this year, but opted against taking the risk.

PLUS: Why Peugeot couldn't afford to take a Le Mans gamble in 2022

And it was a big risk in the way it wouldn’t have been in the days of the 905 or 908. The LMH rules limit performance developments to just five so-called ‘evo jokers’ over the lifecycle of the car. Blooding the car before it was proven, either in terms of speed or reliability, at Le Mans was a risk not worth taking.

“We had a phase of the project when we really tried to be at Le Mans this year,” says Olivier Jansonnie, technical director of the 9X8 project at Peugeot Sport. “Then we came back to the original plan, and I think we made a good decision.”

So that leaves the same five entries for Le Mans as last year. The difference is that each and everyone is going into the race with at least a sporting chance.

Peugeot would have needed to homologate its 9x8 before Spa to be eligible to run at Le Mans, a risk it deemed too great

Photo by: Peugeot Sport