Audi is quite confident of its new R18 e-tron Hybrid quattro LMP1 car for winning this year’s Le Mans 24 Hours, and rightly so. For the last couple of years they turned up with the most innovative car, and thrashed the competition. This time though, there’s something bugging them, a Toyota. The TS030 marks the return of the Japanese brand to the world’s most prestigious endurance race, and it’s a hybrid too.

The Germans should be scared. Toyota is coming armed to the teeth to bring Audi down from its pedestal by force. They have developed a sophisticated system for the TS030, specifically for motorsport, and they’ve got a lineup of great drivers to pilot the two cars for 24 hours.

The hybrid powertrain has been produced by the Toyota’s motorsport division at Higashifuji in Japan, and the TS030 HYBRID chassis has been developed and manufactured by Toyota Motorsport (TMG) in Cologne, Germany.TMG is the team’s home base and also provides the on-track personnel. They have been testing it constantly at different tracks such as Paul Ricard in France, but also at MotorLand Aragon (Spain), Magny-Cours (France) and Le Mans itself. They are dedicated.

As for the drivers, the number 7 car features two-time winner Alex Wurz (Austria), former Sebring 12 Hours winner Nicolas Lapierre (France) and ex-Formula 1 driver Kazuki Nakajima (Japan). In the number 8 car, three-time Le Mans pole position winner Stéphane Sarrazin (France) joins multiple endurance winner Anthony Davidson (Great Britain) and Formula 1 young gun Sébastien Buemi (Switzerland).