Toyota Confirms GR010 Hybrid “Evolution” for 2023

Photo: James Moy/Toyota

Toyota has confirmed that it will continue down an evolutionary path with the GR010 Hybrid, with Toyota Gazoo Racing Europe technical director Pascal Vasselon ruling out an all-new car for the 2023 FIA World Endurance Championship season.

Vasselon dismissed reports that the Japanese manufacturer would debut a so-called GR020 Hybrid next year, confirming that evolutions will be made under the Le Mans Hypercar technical regulations that permit no more than five ‘evo jokers’ over the reg’s five-season lifespan.

“Our job is to make evolutional [updates],” Vasselon told selected reporters ahead of this weekend’s season-ending 8 Hours of Bahrain. “As usual, like this year, we will have an evolution next year.

“We keep the GR010 and we make [an] evolution because we are learning, and we are committed to make it better.”

Toyota rolled out with updates to its LMH car this season, primarily focused around a pre-season switch to 12.5-inch wide wheels at the front and 14-inch wheels in the rear — after running a season with 13-inch wheels all-around.

It also debuted a new open differential ahead of the 6 Hours of Monza, to better conform to the adjusted LMH technical regulations in relation to LMDh convergence.

While the change in tire size and new diff were not counted as jokers, Vasselon would not confirm how many jokers Toyota has utilized so far.

“We have been using jokers but we don’t want to make a public account of them,” he explained.

“It was a different situation because the tire change [for the 2022 season] somehow has imposed itself to us after several regulation changes.”

When asked by Sportscar365 if the debut of Peugeot’s wingless 9X8 and the recently unveiled Ferrari 499P has influenced Toyota on its forthcoming updates, Vasselon said the procedure is different under the LMH regulations, which has essentially thrown out any performance-related advantages.

“With every new car [in LMP1], we were scrutinizing the aero elements to find ideas of how they managed this or that,” he said. “Now, this is gone because the aero level is really straightforward to achieve. So everyone is able to be in the window.

“It’s [now] all about being reliable, easy to maintain, easy to service. This is why it’s possible to make evolutions because the evolutions which are heavily controlled by the FIA, such as achieving performance, normally we are in the ballpark of what’s expected.

“What we can make better is serviceability, reliability and this we can make evolutions on.”

While not being drawn to the areas of development for 2023, Vasselon said the evolutions will be “more subtle” compared to this year.

“We can only confirm that we have people [whose] job is to prepare evolutions,” he said. “Definitely we will have evolutions like this year we had roughly the same staff working on the car and we will have evolutions like we had this season.”

Outside of the Le Mans Test Day, Vasselon revealed that Toyota has not conducted any private testing since April, with the updated GR010 Hybrid set to only begin testing in January, which is believed to be due to the WEC’s testing restrictions.

John Dagys

John Dagys is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Sportscar365. Dagys spent eight years as a motorsports correspondent for FOXSports.com and SPEED Channel and has contributed to numerous other motorsports publications worldwide. Contact John