While Toyota's victory at Le Mans over the weekend may have seemed somewhat of a foregone conclusion, the public debut of the GR Super Sport was a welcome surprise. Because it had all gone a little quiet on the Toyota hybrid hypercar front, with all focus seemingly on the GR Yaris and four-cylinder Supra. Plus, well, Toyota weren't the only ones stuffing a successful (and incredibly powerful) motorsport powertrain into a production car to hog the headlines - don't forget the AMG One as well.
However, the weekend saw the GR Super Sport shown to the public - or at least as many as could attend Le Mans - for the very first time. Progress, it would seem, is continuing nicely on Toyota's 1,000hp rocket ship. As well as being its first appearance outside a photographic studio, the run around La Sarthe also showed the Super Sport as a convertible for the first time; whether that will be popular with buyers - or just a one-off for the event - remains to be seen.
Former Toyota LMP1 driver Alex Wurz drove for the demo laps, commenting on the similarities between road and race car - "particularly the four-wheel drive and the hybrid system" It really does seem staggering that we'll soon be at the point where both an F1-engined hypercar and an LMP-engined one will be road legal. And the best bit? Apparently the car driven over the weekend "was only a small taste of the GR Super Sport's true performance."
When the Super Sport concept was announced back in 2018, there was no announcement of it even making production, let alone a date. With that confirmed last year and the car looking even closer to production in this appearance, it's fairly safe to assume that 2021 will be a big year for the Super Sport. Especially so as it'll be the last year of validity for the LMP1 prototypes in the WEC, as the new hypercars share a season with them as the top class before taking it over for 2022. And by that point, a V6 Toyota hybrid could be a much trickier sell than, say, a V12 Aston Martin...
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