The Toyota TS050 has been competing in LMP1 since 2016 and the 2019/20 season will be it’s last before the hypercar era. So what’s new on this lastest TS050?
Throughout the early years of the TS050’s career, the intense competition of Audi and Porsche coupled with Toyota’s notorious bad luck lead to some disappointing results, particularly at Le Mans. However, in 2017 Kamui Kobayashi lit up the timing screens – setting the all-time fastest lap of 3m14.791s, putting it on pole in Qualifying. Although this performance didn’t transfer to the race where a crash, a clutch failure and technical problems handed the win to Porsche. But in 2018, Toyota came back with a vengeance. Although it was the only LMP1 manufacturer left standing, it still had to fend off changing Equivalence of Technology penalties as well as a competitive field of LMP1 non-hybrids. Despite this, the 2018/19 TS050 claimed victory at the 24 hours of Le Mans, making it the second car from a Japanese manufacturer to ever win at the prestigious 24 hours. However, the nature of the 2018/19 season meant that Toyota had the chance to win Le Mans again in 2019, which they took, as well as crossing the line first at every other round of the season for good measure. Naturally, Toyota were crowned manufacturer and driver champions, but can Toyota continue this success in 2019/20?
The 2019/20 WEC paddock is looking rather bleak. The LMP1 category has lost Dragonspeed, SMP Racing and ByKolles and although Ginetta have returned, this still only leaves three LMP1 teams with Toyota and Rebellion. The other categories have taken a hit too, with the likes of Ford and BMW all leaving, due to uncertainties surrounding the 2020/21 Hypercar regulations.
Yet, although it may seem that this season’s champions have already been decided, the governing bodies are doing everything they can to increase competition. As well as penalising Toyota through changing Balance of Performance regulations, the LMP1 non-hybrids have now had a full year of running. Therefore, not only has the reliability of these racers increased, but so has the rate and quality of development. Furthermore, a new Michelin tyre will also be introduced which aims to close the gap between the Toyota’s and the non-hybrids. So it seems that Toyota still needs to achieve impressive performance of both its team and car, with the latter seeing significant upgrades for the 2019/20 season.
Balance of Performance
The changes to the balance of performance regulations now means that a successful car will gradually be slowed throughout the season via fuel flow, hybrid boost, weight and fuel energy per lap. Furthermore, the car starts with a 14kg weight penalty compared to the end of last season, which could be worth four tenths of a second around Barcelona and Silverstone according to Toyota’s calculations. Therefore, the primary target for the 2019/20 TS050 is efficiency, with the upgrade package trying to mitigate the effect of the penalties already applied, as well as those that could come later in the year.
Chassis
When the TS050 was originally introduced back in 2016, the regulations specified that due to cost-saving initiatives agreed with the other manufacturers (Porsche and Audi), the chassis would be valid for two years, after which it could be upgraded. However, when both Audi and Porsche had left the championship by the end of the 2017, Toyota had no reason to spend large amounts of money on a new chassis. Therefore, this is the fourth year with the same chassis for the 2019/20 TS050, although a new design at the front of the car has incorporated a higher nose.
‘You can see that the nose has changed a lot and that has affected the airflow over the car,’ says TMG’s project leader John Litjens. ‘We are also channelling air through the car, so [airflow] is split [over and under the car]. That base concept is still there, the undercuts are still there, it was just other development and some help with the air over the car. The pure aero target is to gain efficiency, and that is the development [that we achieved]. That should not get worse, and that’s a clear target for the design group.’
Aerodynamics
Toyota have introduced a host of aerodynamic upgrades to the 2019/20 TS050. This includes a new nose, revised location of mirrors and a smaller airbox. Under the skin, minor modifications have taken place with an emphasis on reliability.
The mirrors are now in the rear of the front wheel shroud which has cleaned up the airflow to the rear wing and also reduced drag. Although, rear vision is supported by the now-standard rear view cameras that takes care of the field of vision centrally behind the driver, but the mirrors are still required by regulation.
Another difference is the reduced size of the air intake over the cockpit. ‘The reduced air box was just one of the things that was not addressed before,’ continues Litjens. ‘These are the aero things that in the wind tunnel you cannot really adjust because you have the fixing there.’ Cars are normally mounted on a post attached to the roof of the wind tunnel model, and lowered onto a moving belt, making changing the airbox design a little more challenging.
Tyres
The new Michelin tyres are believed to help the privateers the most as a performance issue with the 2018/19 tyres led to these teams struggling. ‘It seems that the tyre issue was one of the main issues for them [the privateers] being caught out when conditions were changing, so we expect that Michelin has done a proper job,’ says Vasselon. ‘We do not expect a huge step in outright performance, but [that they are] better able to cope with changing conditions, and this we know from the work done with Michelin.’
Testing
The 2019/20 version of the TS050 ran for the first time at Paul Ricard in France in January 2019, and then had another test at Aragon after Le Mans, in preparation for the Prologue which was completed in Barcelona at the end of July.The TS050 will begin its final season at Silverstone running its high-downforce configuration, with a low-downforce package set to debut at Spa.
Check out this page for all the tech updates Toyota introduce to its TS050 throughout the 2019/20 season!
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