Is Toyota Going To Win Every WEC Race In 2018/19?

A couple of years ago, LMP1 was booming. Toyota, Porsche, and Audi were putting on an incredible show at the front with very different cars, Nissan had a stab with the radical front-wheel-drive GT-R LM Nismo (the less said about that the better) and there were rumours flying around about all sorts of manufacturers possibly entering. The WEC was going to get as big as F1, they said.

Fast-forward to this year and there was a worry there might not even be an LMP1 category at all in the future. Dieselgate brought Audi’s programme to an end in 2016 and Porsche followed suit this year. Would Toyota race in a category which has no rivals, which could have lost its status as a ‘World Championship’, and for which any failure to win would likely come with a huge amount of negative publicity?

Thankfully, a whole host of new privateer teams have joined LMP1 for the 2018/19 ‘super season’ (which starts in May next year and ends with the 2019 Le Mans 24 Hours) and - after liking what it sees with next year’s regulations - Toyota has indeed confirmed that it’s going to be sticking around.

Future rules have also hinted at moving towards having LMP1 cars which look more like road cars, harking back to the halcyon days of GT1 in the late 1990s which brought us legendary motors like the Toyota GT-One, Mercedes CLK-GTR and Porsche 911 GT1, which apparently is something that Toyota likes very much.

More positives include the chance of finally winning Le Mans. Toyota has come unbelievably close on multiple occasions (like in 2016 when the lead car broke down on the last lap) without ever actually winning it and it’ll be a curse it’s keen to break. Another person desperate to win Le Mans is Fernando Alonso, who’s persistently rumoured to be joining the team for a few races (he’s already tested for them) in his pursuit of motorsport’s triple crown. The Indy 500 enjoyed a massive boost in publicity when he raced there this year, so why wouldn’t Toyota want a slice of that too?

So, it’s mostly good for Toyota, but good for Toyota doesn’t necessarily mean good for us. No-one likes it when a season is dominated by a single team, and yet that’s exactly what we’re going to be faced with across the eight WEC races of 2018/19.

Yes, there are going to be more LMP1 teams than just Toyota, but they’re all privateers with a fraction of the budget. Yes, rules have been introduced to make the teams with non-hybrid cars (i.e. all the privateers) able to compete in terms of pace with the hybrid cars (i.e. Toyota), but the extra range afforded by the hybrid elements means the Toyotas will be able to go much further on the same amount of fuel - a good thing in any race, but over 24 hours? That’s a serious advantage straight off the bat.

That’s assuming that the cars perform equally in the first place, which given Toyota’s years of experience in LMP1 and the relative lack thereof from manufacturers like Ginetta and BR Engineering (both of which are supplying LMP1 cars to privateer teams next season) make you think it’s likely to be a walkover anyway.

Could we see Toyota winning every single race in the 2018/19 season? The short answer is yes, Le Mans curse notwithstanding. The WEC does have three other classes, all of which are very close and incredibly entertaining, but as the top category LMP1 is always going to be the main focus.

Of course, there are plenty of factors that could cost Toyota, such as reliability and accidents, but the way things have gone over the last few years that seems highly unlikely - especially as, with no real rivals, the team don’t have to push 100 per cent of the time, all the time.

It seems obvious to suggest that Toyota will be wanting to win every race. But it’s not just because they’re competitors driven to succeed - it’s because - with the competition there’s likely to be - they simply can’t afford to lose.