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Old 12 Feb 2014, 21:28 (Ref:3367505)   #153
chernaudi
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chernaudi has a real shot at the championship!chernaudi has a real shot at the championship!chernaudi has a real shot at the championship!chernaudi has a real shot at the championship!chernaudi has a real shot at the championship!chernaudi has a real shot at the championship!
If that's the case, then it's another Toyota/Peugeot tie up, albeit by proxy--that is, if the engine in question is one of the BMW/PSA jointly commissioned engines.

I've even been looking at the lemans-history.com site, and there are a lot of vague similarities between the Peugeot 908 and the Toyota TS030 as far as aero. Problem is that there, it's case of using what science tells you as far as how to do something than copycat logic (such as the 2002 Cadillac LMP having obvious but vague similarities to the Audi R8).

As far as the TS040 goes, Toyota know what worked with the TS030 and what can be transferred, what won't work, and what can be evolved vs developed from scratch. They have that recent, practical experience.

The fact that the '14 R18 has some similarities to the '11-'13 cars shows the evolutionary processes, and it's been rumored that the TS040 has some TS030 cues in it's design. But Audi and Toyota have the advantage of having recently raced cars at LM and in the WEC in LMP1, so it's not like even with the rules changes that they're 100% going down a blind alley. That vs Porsche, who have had to basically start almost 100% from scratch due to being out of the prototype picture for a few years, since they wound down the RS Spyder factory program at the end of '08 and shut down the private team support program in '10.

I don't know how TMG will stand up against Audi out of the gate, but if you go off of recent experience, I'd have to say that TMG might have the edge over Porsche if Porsche have early season issues.
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