By Mark Kleis
Thursday, Jan 26th, 2012 @ 5:50 am

When you think of hybrid vehicles the last thing to get excited about is the sound they produce (or don’t for that matter, depending on how you look at it), but for the new Toyota TS030 race car the sound is nothing short of pure bliss.

The car is an all-new entrant into the wildly popular and competitive (at least for the European fan base) 24 Hours of Le Mans race, in the ultra-fast LMP1 class.

(More after video #1)

While the first video is a bit slow to get started, it does an excellent job of showing off the hybrid powertrain of the TS030. If you want to just see pure, brutal track-eating testing however, the video below is probably more for you.

(More after video #2)

What’s so special about the TS030 Hybrid?
For one, it is the first confirmed hybrid vehicle to be competing in the FIA World Endurance Championship. The car uses a 3.4-liter naturally-aspirated V8 along with both a front motor system produced by Aisin AW and a rear motor system developed by official team partner Denso.

Because of the rules, however, things get a bit tricky as the hybrid boost can only drive one set of wheels, so Toyota is still performing testing to see if they want to add some oomph to the front or rear of the car.

Considering the TS030 is a new entrant to the LMP1 segment by Toyota, the automaker and its team of engineers and drivers have a long way to go to prepare for the race – especially after a hiatus of over 10 years, practice and time is exactly what the doctor ordered. The new team, which is based at Toyota Motorsport GmbH (TMG) in Cologne, Germany, will make its race debut in May at the Six Hours of Spa-Francorchamps, the second round of the FIA World Endurance Championship.

From there, Toyota Racing intends to enter two TS030 HYBRID cars in the Le Mans 24 Hours in June. Participation in further rounds is yet to be confirmed.

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