Toyota s GR010 Wins on Spa Debut
The Hypercar class is underway, and the favorite is 1-for-1. James Moy PhotographyGetty Images
The GR010, the first factory Le Mans Hypercar, came into today s FIA World Endurance Championship season opener burdened with the weight of an entire category s expectations. As the only car built by a major manufacturer in Hypercar s first season, GR010 will be the clear favorite for both Le Mans and every World Endurance Championship round it has not been shut out of by the category s take on success ballast.
Those expectations are in place, in part, because the car will be competing against relatively weak competition in its first few rounds. The program s only direct competition for the early portion of the season is a grandfathered-in privateer LMP1 car built for Rebellion but now run by Renault s Alpine division, and the regulations were written to ensure that any car in the the LMH category would comfortably be fast enough to outpace competition
Toyota s GR010 Wins on Spa Debut
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Le Mans Hypercar Is Not There Yet Fred Smith
It s a unique year at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. In 2023, the introduction of the LMDh class means that the race is expected to be the most competitive since at least the peak Group C days of the 1980s. Even next year, it will be an all-out battle between Toyota and early Hypercar entrant Peugeot. But, in 2021, Toyota is the only factory racing program in the entire top level of sports car racing, their only opponents a grandfathered LMP1 car bought by Renault s Alpine division and a planned custom-built Hypercar contested by boutique manufacturer Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus. In other words, anything but a Le Mans win would be a genuine shock.
autoevolution 29 Apr 2021, 14:33 UTC ·
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They call it LMDh, and it’s a name endurance race fanatics will know extremely well in a couple of years. The moniker represents a class of prototype cars that will race each other in the FIA World Endurance Championship and the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship. It’s a class that has already drawn the eye of several carmakers, including the Germans from Audi and Porsche. 1 photo
The two carmakers announced ever since last year that they’ve started developing LMDh cars, and given how they sleep under the same roof, they are doing this together. Despite that, the two vehicles should be clear representatives of their own brands.
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