Toyota Gazoo Racing have been handed a weight penalty ahead of this month’s 24 hours of Le Mans double points round for the World Endurance Championship.
This comes as the weight for the toyota TS050 Hybrid which raced last year exceeding by 7Kg compared to the edition they are looking forward to present this year. The last year’s car weighed 888Kgs whreas this year’s car weighed 895Kgs creating the 7Kg gap.
The new weights of the car were published on the Equivalence of technology table on Wednesday and are significantly low compared to the weights in the previous years which had a record maximum of 932Kgs, reflecting the higher per-kilometre levels of hybrid energy deployment allowed on regular WEC tracks compared with the 8.47-mile Circuit de la Sarthe at Le Mans.
The weights for the normal and turbocharged versions of the toyota cars remain at 816Kgs and 833Kgs respectively as per the Equivalence of Technology table released on Wednesday.
The maximum amount of petrol that can be used by the cars has also been increased so as to enable Rebellion, Ginetta and the Bykolles racing cars to achieve at least 11 laps between the pitstops as the Toyotas. This comes as the equality of stint length between the hybrid and the non-hybrid LMP1 cars being a major change made ahead of the 2019/2020 World Endurance Championship.
Privateers in the championship were also given a one second advantage on being informed the time it takes to fuel the cars as the refuelling restrictor diameter were increased for both the normal and the hybrid cars. This creates a level playing field for the two classes(normal and hybrid) of cars to compete in 2019/2020 WEC Le Mans.
Aston Martin Vantage GTEs boost levels have been incresed from last year’s, this is after the boost levels were reduced on the british cars on the Friday of the Le Mans week after Sorensen claimed th pole position for the GTE Pro.