Toyota made a lot of noise with their hybrid Le Man race car last year, but in the end they lost to Audi and their hybrid racer. The Japanese are not giving in though. They’ve come up with a revised version of the last year’s car for the 2013 season, and they have high hopes for it.

The reason they didn’t scrap the old plans and make a new car is because from 2014 the rules and regulations of endurance racing are all going to change. So for this year they just tweaked the old car, which is a pretty competent race car anyway. It’s just not as good as Audi’s.

The TS030 Hybrid has 530hp generated by a 3.4 liter, normally-aspirated V8 petrol engine, combined with 300ho boost from the capacitor-based system. The new car comes with fine-tuned chassis and aerodynamics, and it’s more efficient and reliable.

The hybrid racer will compete in the Le Mans 24 Hours and the FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC) this season. In WEC Toyota will run a two car team with Alex Wurz, Nicolas Lapierre and Kazuki Nakajima piloting the car number 7, and Anthony Davidson, Stéphane Sarrazin and Sébastien Buemi in charge of car number 8.