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The Japanese manufacturer was “far” from its full-season testing allocation of 20 car days in 2022, having not run its LMH contender privately since just before the second round of the championship at Spa in May.
The Le Mans 24 Hours test day in June and the post-season rookie test in Bahrain, where it was obliged to give 30 laps in the car to Lilou Wadoux, were the only two occasions where the title-winning GR010 Hybrid ran outside of race weekends from May onwards.
Budget has been cited by Toyota as the primary reason not to conduct any private testing in the last seven months, with the Cologne-based marque lacking a dedicated test team and extra personnel for the task.
“Apart from the official collective test we didn’t test since April,” revealed Toyota’s technical director Pascal Vasselon, without specifying exactly the exact number of test days it completed at the start of the year.
“Now we are a bit on …