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Toyota plans to give WEC hypercar challenger debut in June 2020

Toyota is planning to give its hypercar challenger for the 2020/21 World Endurance Championship season a June '20 debut

Aston Martin and Toyota are the two manufacturers to have signed up to the new regulations.

Toyota is opting for an all-new bespoke hybrid-powered prototype to replace the TS050 HYBRID, compared to Aston's method of producing a car based on the road-going Valkyrie.

"We will have a car on track in June next year, at the earliest," Toyota team boss Rob Leupen told Autosport at the WEC pre-season test in Barcelona.

"Then we probably have a Prologue [test] in August, so we have five or six weeks to go testing."

Leupen ruled out using a mule car until the new hypercar makes it testing debut, adding: "We don't really use a mule car that often anymore.

"A lot is done digitally, modelling the car, and then developing it in the simulator. Our GR Sports Concept doesn't have a lot to do with our race car."

Leupen had described the delays in getting the hypercar regulations firmed up as "ridiculous", and he confirmed it had cost Toyota "a lot of money".

"We would have liked to see it happen earlier," Leupen said. "It's very late, but I'm glad we finally got there. We've worked on many concepts.

"Often they had to be changed because the rules went in a different direction. With our concepts, we tried to support that process, although it cost us a lot of money."

The FIA and WEC promoter the Automobile Club de l'Ouest projected an annual budget of €30m to compete in the new top-class, based on a five-year commitment.

Leupen does not believe the number is a realistic benchmark for Toyota because of its split operations between Europe and Japan.

But he added that the hypercar regulations will be significantly cheaper than the current LMP1 framework.

"I'm not going to compare [our budget] to the budget the ACO put on the table," he said. "That's not possible because you're working in different countries.

"We are not extremely cost-efficient because our powertrain comes from Japan and we're based in Cologne. If you're very efficient, you're doing everything in one place.

"We're not a great reference, but the new rules are significantly cheaper. We're talking about [savings of] over 50%.

"We used to build a new monocoque every year. If that's 10 million euros every year, then now you can write that off over a period of five years.

"We do get some freedom to develop bits here and there, but there's also a Balance of Performance. Those are massive savings. That's what they wanted and we agree with that."

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