Toyota reworks LMH car for 2022 season

Toyota has reworked its Le Mans Hypercar to incorporate different size wheels and tyres for the 2022 World Endurance Championship. The Japanese manufacturer isn’t confirming it yet, but it is known that it has switched to the second of the two options allowed in the rules.

The Japanese manufacturer’s four-wheeldrive GR010 HYBRID ran with 14-inch tyres front and rear in its title-winning debut season in 2021. Testing this year has taken place with 13.5in fronts and 15in rears, the same option chosen by Glickenhaus for its rear-drive 007 LMH.

So far Toyota has only said that it will reveal the full technical specification of the 2022 version of the

GR010 just prior to the official WEC prologue test at Sebring, the weekend before the season-opener at the US venue on 18 March.

Toyota’s switch between the two tyre-size options in the regulations has been influenced by rule changes following the completion of the process of convergence between the LMH category and sister LMDH class, which comes on stream next year. The so-called ‘120 rule’, the minimum speed in kilometres per hour at which power can be deployed at the front wheels by an LMH hybrid when the cars are on slicks, has become part of the system of Balance of Performance.

That means that this speed and the 150km/h minimum enforced last year when the cars were on wet-weather tyres can change from track to track and from car to car. Toyota appears to have concluded that those speeds will be pushed higher under the BOP, reducing the benefit of the wider front for an all-wheel-drive car.

It is unclear at this stage whether the change in the tyre configuration of the Toyota will count as one of the five evolutions allowed on performance grounds, known as ‘evo jokers’ in the regulations, to each manufacturer over the life cycle of an LMH.