Opinion: Why Toyota Has Become One of the All-Time Endurance Racing Greats

With six 24 Hours of Le Mans victories, including arguably its first against significant competition, Gary Watkins believes Toyota Racing is now one of the top endurance teams of all time...

“Who are the top ten endurance racing teams of all time?” That was a question thrown at me just a little while ago. Joest Racing immediately came to mind. Of course it did. It accrued 11 Le Mans 24 Hours victories with Audi, four or five with Porsche (depending how you count it), and one with Bentley.

JW Automotive, too, flashed into my brain courtesy of its trio of victories with Gulf-liveried machinery. The Porsche factory team was another name I chucked back at my questioner. I didn’t say Toyota Racing, but I probably should have done. But after last weekend, if I’m asked again, the Cologne-based operation is going straight to somewhere near the top of my list, if not the very top.

It’s not just that a team that has had various names above the door over the years is now a six-time winner at Le Mans. Nor that win number six, at least from where I’m standing, means more than the previous five.

This, of course, is the first time it has beaten manufacturer opposition in the 24 Hours: its first three wins were notched up in the dying days of LMP1 in 2018-20 and the next two in 2021 and ’22 were early in the Hypercar era before it truly got going. But what really stood out over the course of the 94th running of the great race was Toyota’s ability to overcome adversity, to sort minor issues on the fly in the heat of competition.

Toyota very nearly didn’t win Le Mans this time around, just as it nearly didn’t triumph in 2021, the first year of the car we’re now calling the TR010 Hybrid.

Back then, it had to overcome a fuel filter problem on both its entries and did so ingeniously. Not only were the drivers told to turn the fuel pump on and off in every major braking zone, but new software was written during the race to bring all four fuel pumps into play. Normally only two were pumping at any one time. The result of all this left field thinking was a 1-2 finish.