The paddock was subject to an extraordinary level of paranoia and secrecy, even by motorsports’ already low standards, with Mercedes and Toyota easily winning that contest.
The line up included full factory teams from BMW, Porsche, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, Chrysler as well as Toyota. The complete car was ready for a shakedown in October of that year so the first target on the road to victory in France the following June was passed.ġ998 was a year of intense manufacturer involvement at the Le Mans 24 Hours. The first tub was built and the rest of the chassis was completed by March 1997. One thing was for certain, he had the pedigree to produce a winner, as evidenced by his Peugeot 905 design that took convincing victories in 19. What did he know and when? That is one question to which you will have to wait a long time for an answer.
Given that the rules at that point did not allow the kind of prototype that he came up with, it begs a few questions as to why he took the radical route, when others such as Nissan did not. Work started on the project in 1996, when former Peugeot designer André de Cortanze was commissioned to produce a car that would be capable of winning Le Mans by 1998. In the background this project would provide the foundations for the planned Formula One campaign, though few were aware of this ultimate destination at the time. Toyota called on their rally team Toyota Team Europe (TTE) from Germany to build and run the car. However, this time it would all be very different. Previously the TOM’S organisation had been entrusted with the task, and despite huge budgets and resources, they had failed.
Toyota’s management had decided on a fresh approach to the question of how to win at Le Mans. This paved the way for the launch of the radical Toyota GT-One or TS020.
Bowing to the inevitable, the restrictions concerning a relationship to a road car were quietly forgotten by both the FIA and (more importantly) the ACO. This process accelerated as soon as Mercedes-Benz arrived on the scene with their CLK GTR. Nissan, Lotus and Panoz joined the GT Festival with cars that stretched the gap from road to race use. This was a hybrid in that the front of the car was based on a 911 steel chassis taken from the production line, but the rear was mainly Porsche 962-derived – especially the engine. Of course, as soon as the McLaren F1 GTR (based on a genuine road car) started winning, Porsche built their GT1. Furthermore, the road-going car had to be offered for sale within 12 months of being homologated.
There was a rule in place that a racing version of a car had to be derived from a model that had been certified for normal road use. The dark days following the 1992 collapse of Group C were followed by a gradual revival that involved racing GTs that were based on actual road-going cars. The last time they were in contention for victory was in 19 when they brought the fabulous GT-One to La Sarthe. Toyota has never won the ultimate prize in Endurance Racing but has come really close on a number of occasions. The 2012 edition of Le Mans will be a contest between Audi and Toyota at the sharp end, with newcomers Toyota taking on the role of the underdogs when faced with the Audi armada.
Here’s the first of two pieces from the DSC Archive in 2012 looking at Toyota’s astonishing TS020 or GT-One from 1998/99įirst up – John Brooks’ retrospective on the cars – very much the predecessors in concept of today’s Hypercars!