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"We will come back stronger next year"
Why Toyota is not going to win LM this year (and ever if they don’t change their approach)?
You can call me a hater but all this below comes from frustration as I like the brand and their road cars which are famous for their relability
But as we all know there is a paradox: the most reliable road cars are produced by a company which fails to win the most important endurance race for ca. 30 years and multiple attempts mostly due to reliability problems and so called "bad luck"
And why is that? My remarks are mostly relevant to the TMG from hybrid era but could be also valid for earller efforts.
IMO they simply always refuse to give it their 100%
Of course it is the people involved. Beginning with Mr. Toyoda, who reportedly wants this race badly, but looks like he doesn't care much in reality.
In the TMG itself there is no one who can persuade the board to give them what it takes.
Especially in the Audi and Porsche era. Why the others were spending more money? Maybe because they thought that it was simply necessary to win.
Toyota is spending 80-100 milions for couple of years without success. Maybe it was sensible to give it much more for at least one time and actuallly save The cars are designed by the same people. They end up fast but with poor reliability and hard to service under pressure.
The team is run and managed by the same people which keep making bad decisions it seems.
Then the engineers: for example, the incident with Buemi and the broken hybrid in #8. First, the telemetry failed to discover antything is wrong with the car, not mentioning what it was. I assume it (software or hardware) was not that bad, maybe it was not possible (probably not for these people).
But the engineer or whoever told Seb to go on for couple of minutes at least, before he begun to yell at them and they decided, that it was necessary to pit the car...
Could do better. Maybe it would be possible to fix the car quicker?
Generally I fail to comprehend why on earth Toyota company keeps the same people at TMG, especially the team managers obviously.
In every bussines such failing rate would be impossible, right ?
They changed someone in charge last year but it was also a guy which was in the team from the beginning.
I feel like they need to hire someone from outside to shake them. I am sure an good oustide manager would look around quickly and after a couple of hours(minutes?) would scream " Oh boy, you are doing this and that COMPLETELY wrong" I do not know, maybe someone would be very good at making coffe instead of doing something more important.
I know it is impossible to hire Audi or Porsche drivers or engineers but maybe someone like dr. Ullrich would be possible?
Most importanly it must be someone from outside with fresh look at things and surely any talented manager would do even without knowledge of motorsport.
But Toyota changes nothing.
They have no winners in the team afaik. Lapierre did not help last year... I also think that big part or most of these people do not even believe they can make it and there is not a very good mood and attitude in this team.
They prepare for the unexpected, which is good but probably there will be something really unexpected which will happen.
Are they even able to bring the car to the pits from the beginning of the lap?
Ok, maybe they can do it and repair the car quicker than last year but they will not have much time. There will be a bunch of privateers which will be only 2 or 3 laps down to take the lead. And there is not much problems which can be fixed in such a short time.
And all that when this year it could have been simple – I feel that regardless of all bringing 3 cars would do it this time. But – last year they failed with three. So guess what, it did not help so let us bring two! We are the only manufacturer so let’s try to make it cheaper and with 2 cars. No, no it is wrong. The whole point is that if you are Toyota then you must prepare 120 %. With two cars you are certainly not prepared. Take a look at Porsche. They withdrawed from LMP1 but brought 4 GT cars to Le Mans the very next year. Ford also has 4. They are giving it what it takes, they really want it apparently. But not Toyota.
So for me they do not deserve this win. There is good reason why they did not make it yet.
Only thing to their credit is that they keep trying. But how?
They do not need a course to lose this race, no. As I see it they will be very, very lucky when they do it.
I just hope that they bring these 3 cars next year and let some heads roll before maybe so they can finally make it.
i wish them all the luck nevertheless cause this is only thing that can help.
I hope that they will prove me wrong after my "hate" and because I said it it will be just allright.
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