It has recently been announced that Toyota will make a welcome return to the world’s most famous endurance race. The 24 Hours of Le Mans next summer will see the Japanese car maker enter the top LMP1 class with a completely new machine.

The new team behind Toyota’s return to the spotlight will be based at Toyota Motorsport’s headquarters in Cologne and the new prototype is set to begin pre-season testing in early 2012. So far little to no detail has been provided with regard to the Le Mans contender; all we know is that it will be running a hybrid petrol powertrain.

The cars chassis will be developed by the Germany-based team whilst the engine will be built and engineered by the genius team of Toyota back in Japan. It is expected that the car will also compete in a number of other races next year.

The Toyota will face tough competition, especially from the hybrid turbo diesel powered machines of Peugeot and Audi. The Peugeot 908 and the Audi R18 TDI were the class of the field at Le Mans this year, with super efficient, reliable and powerful engines propelling them round the 8.5 mile circuit ahead of anyone else. Whether these cars even use every day diesel components, such as a diesel particulate filter that one would expect from their every day diesel powered road car, is something we cannot be sure about. However, we do know that more often than not, a successful racing car will mean that the technology used will trickle down into the road cars of the future.

That is most certainly the case with Toyota’s new venture, and Toyota’s Motorsport Chairman has said: “By using our hybrid technology this time will be a completely new challenge. In addition, we aim to learn from the experience of competing in such a challenging motorsport environment to enhance our production car technology.” It’s certainly looking good for Toyota’s future road cars then!

Toyota, of course, has a rich history with Le Mans. The 1980s, and in particular the 1990s, saw great success for the Japanese company. The iconic and enormously fast GT-One of the 90s set a lap record around the Circuit de la Sarthe and Britain’s much loved F1 commentator and former racing driver, Martin Brundle, was lucky enough to race one.

The question now is: Will the car in front be a Toyota? With next year’s race fast approaching already, they do indeed aim to be back at the front of the sport competing for victory. Even if this is not quite possible at next year’s race however, just having them on the grid is sure to spice things up a notch!