While Toyota’s new TS050 was a vast improvement on their 2015 WEC challenger, 2014 World Champion Anthony Davidson was circumspect about the Japanese team’s chances heading into the first round at Silverstone – despite being the meat in a German manufacturer sandwich.
"We’re already closer [to Porsche] than where we were this time last year, but it’s not quite close enough, it feels” Davidson said to Motorsport.com.
"We can only really go by the lap-times that we see and the odd glimpse that you have of their car on the track, but most of the time, when you see them on the circuit, you are running tyres that are on different life. And it’s easy to jump to conclusions.”
One area that Toyota excelled in was straight-line speed, recording a top speed of 340.7 kph compared to Audi’s 310 kph and Porsche’s 301 kph.
While there’s no doubt both Audi and Porsche will feature revised aero packages for Le Mans, the 30-40 kph difference suggests Toyota have La Sarthe in their sites in June.
“Our straightline speed is good and that the way that we get there is good” continued Davidson. “That’s one area we massively struggled last year. We were losing a second in the straight line last year here and now we’re the ones setting the pace.”
"And it just feels like a much more efficient car than last year’s as well, aerodynamically. So who knows? Maybe we’ll be right there.”
Davidson admitted moving up to the 8MJ category was a big step and one that may put Toyota at a technical disadvantage in terms of developing the technology at the rate required to overhaul Porsche.
“They were already at the 8MJ category” he said. “They’re gonna hone that. It allows them to work on things that they’ve ironed out and we’re still working on. It’s up to everyone else to try and catch them and bridge that gap."
Audi did the least amount of running with their new R18, encountering a few gremlins, but was however “no show of strength in respect of the season opener at Silverstone in three weeks’ time,” claimed Dieter Gass, Deputy Head of Audi Sport.
“We have made many excellent findings during this test, which we must now implement technically.”
Image Audi Motorsport