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Toyota Yet To Identify Le Mans Failure
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Toyota has yet to identify the technical problem that handed a last-gasp victory to Porsche in last weekend's Le Mans 24 Hours.
Initial investigations at the track did not reveal why the #5 Toyota TS050 Hybrid suddenly slowed with five minutes of the race to go when Kazuki Nakajima was at the wheel.
A spokesman for the Toyota Motorsport team said, "We suffered a sudden loss of power and we are still investigating the precise root cause for an issue that we have never experienced previously. A full update will be issued in due course."
The #5 car, which Nakajima shared with Anthony Davidson and Sebastien Buemi, was leading by more than a minute when it hit problems on the penultimate lap of the race. Nakajima stopped on the start-finish line and recycled through the car's electronic systems before completing one final slow lap. The Toyota was not classified because the lap took more than the six-minute maximum specified in the rules.
The technical problem for Toyota allowed Porsche to take its second consecutive victory at Le Mans with the 919 Hybrid shared by Neel Jani, Marc Lieb and Romain Dumas.
The #6 Toyota finished second in the hands of Mike Conway, Stephane Sarrazin and Kamui Kobayashi.
Initial investigations at the track did not reveal why the #5 Toyota TS050 Hybrid suddenly slowed with five minutes of the race to go when Kazuki Nakajima was at the wheel.
A spokesman for the Toyota Motorsport team said, "We suffered a sudden loss of power and we are still investigating the precise root cause for an issue that we have never experienced previously. A full update will be issued in due course."
The #5 car, which Nakajima shared with Anthony Davidson and Sebastien Buemi, was leading by more than a minute when it hit problems on the penultimate lap of the race. Nakajima stopped on the start-finish line and recycled through the car's electronic systems before completing one final slow lap. The Toyota was not classified because the lap took more than the six-minute maximum specified in the rules.
The technical problem for Toyota allowed Porsche to take its second consecutive victory at Le Mans with the 919 Hybrid shared by Neel Jani, Marc Lieb and Romain Dumas.
The #6 Toyota finished second in the hands of Mike Conway, Stephane Sarrazin and Kamui Kobayashi.
