How Toyota overcame a traumatic trio of Le Mans defeats
Toyota has been part of the World Endurance Championship's LMP1 hybrid era from the start and has faced a rollercoaster ride. Four years on from its famous Le Mans capitulation in 2016, the key players tell its story
In 2011 Toyota found itself on a crucial crossroads, stuck in between two motorsport programmes that both represented unfinished business for the Japanese giant. Two years earlier, its Cologne-based Formula 1 arm Toyota Motorsport GmbH (TMG) - recently renamed Toyota Gazoo Racing Europe - was one of the three teams that cleverly interpreted the new-for-2009 regulations and came up with a double diffuser.
Its TF109 came out of the gates strong and while it couldn't match Brawn's BGP 001 in the opening rounds, the Bahrain Grand Prix should have been the race where the operation finally scored its first victory after 125 attempts. But despite Jarno Trulli taking pole, the team shot itself in the foot with a poor tyre strategy call and lost the chance to break its duck.
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