Toyota to mark anniversary of its Le Mans 24 Hours project with special livery
Toyota will mark the 40th anniversary of its first factory-supported assault on the Le Mans 24 Hours with a special livery for this year's edition of the race.
The #7 Toyota GR010 HYBRID Le Mans Hypercar to be driven by Kamui Kobayashi, Mike Conway and Nyck de Vries in the double-points round of the World Endurance Championship on 14/15 June will run in a colour scheme that pays tribute to the marque's GT-One of the late 1990s.
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The GT-One, originally known as the TS020, was the first Le Mans contender to be developed at the Cologne headquarters of what is now Toyota Gazoo Racing Europe, which has masterminded the Japanese manufacturer's current WEC engagement starting in 2012.
The livery of the #7 GR010 for Le Mans is inspired by that of the three GT-Ones from the first season of the two-year programme in 1998.
A statement from Toyota read: 'Its distinctive red and white livery has been reimagined for the 2025-specification #7 GR010 HYBRID.
'A red base colour is given a dynamic edge by jagged white flashes which speed over the car from front to back and make an unmistakable connection to the TS020.'
#28 Toyota Motorsport Toyota GT-One: Martin Brundle, Emmanuel Collard, Eric Hélary
#28 Toyota Motorsport Toyota GT-One: Martin Brundle, Emmanuel Collard, Eric Hélary
Jean-Philippe Legrand
Jean-Philippe Legrand
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The GT-One followed on from a line of Toyota or Toyota-engined machinery that had competed at Le Mans from 1985.
Toyota is counting the two-car attack with a pair of Dome 85C Group C chassis powered by a rally-based 2.1-litre turbo engine as its first official engagement at the 24-hour classic.
It began a sportscar odyssey clearly aimed at competing at Le Mans two years before with limited support of a project jointly run by Japanese constructor Dome and the TOM'S race team.
Two Dome chassis with the turbo engine were fielded domestically in Japan in 1983 and in the Fuji round of the WEC late in the season.
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The first full-factory campaign at Le Mans came in 1987, when the cars were called Toyotas for the first time and the team ran under the Toyota Team TOM'S banner.
A Japanese Sigma Group 6 prototype with a Toyota powerplant had raced at Le Mans in 1975, while a Group 5 silhouette racer developed on the Celica shape by TOM'S failed to qualify for the French enduro in 1980.
Since 1985 there have been a total of 61 Toyota entries at Le Mans over 26 editions of the race. The marque has won overall five times, taken 18 podiums and claimed eight pole positions.
The #8 Toyota of Sebastien Buemi, Brendon Hartley and Ryo Hirakawa will contest Le Mans this year in its regular WEC livery.
To read more Motorsport.com articles visit our website.
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New York Times
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In the end it was the 40-year-old man who was crying. Not the child with the runners-up medal. They were tears of joy as Cristiano Ronaldo, overcome with emotion, dropped to his knees after Ruben Neves converted the penalty that won Portugal the UEFA Nations League for the second time in six years. Love him or loathe him, Ronaldo has a magnetic attraction to silverware and nothing gives him greater satisfaction than celebrating success with his country. Advertisement His third trophy with Portugal was won on a night when the subplot involving him and Lamine Yamal was too good to ignore. Comparing players across different generations is always difficult, especially when the game changes so much over time. But what about when two great players from different generations end up playing in the same game? 'One is coming in and another is exiting the stage. If you want to see me as another generation, then that's OK,' Ronaldo said on the eve of Sunday's final in Munich. It's hard to see Ronaldo any other way when Yamal is on the pitch with him. Yamal, after all, is only 17 years old. Ronaldo is 40. Yamal's father is younger than Ronaldo, and Yamal is only three years older than Ronaldo's eldest son, Cristiano Jr, who plays for Portugal Under-15s. A 23-year age gap on the pitch is unprecedented at a level of the game where fortysomethings are typically enjoying retirement or management and 17-year-olds are nowhere to be seen. That said, there's nothing about Ronaldo or Yamal that's typical. One of them belongs near the top of any conversation about the greatest ever footballers ('I am the best in history,' Ronaldo told the journalist Edu Aguirre in February). The other is a teenage phenomenon who is one of the leading contenders for the Ballon d'Or at an age when he still isn't old enough to drive a car in Spain. 'Two galaxies colliding' was the headline above the match preview in the Spanish newspaper Marca. 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Quite simply, it wasn't Yamal's night and you got the feeling that it might turn out that way as early as the fourth minute, when Ronaldo, of all people, dispossessed him and launched a Portugal counter attack. Advertisement There's no need for a post-mortem into where it all went wrong for Yamal. He's still a kid. In fact, maybe we already expect too much from him and assume he will be brilliant every time he sets foot on the pitch, just as he was against France in the semi-final in Stuttgart on Thursday night. That, however, is not how elite football works. 'Let him grow, do not put him under pressure, so we can enjoy a talent like this for many years,' Ronaldo warned beforehand. How much longer we will enjoy Ronaldo's talent is anyone's guess. In the eyes of many, he has been out of sight and out of mind ever since leaving Manchester United in December 2022 to sign for the Saudi Pro League side Al Nassr. For Portugal, however, he remains a permanent fixture in their starting line-up and you get the feeling that will continue to be the case until the day he decides otherwise, rather than any manager. Against Spain, he only touched the ball 22 times and registered just one shot. In fact, he was on the periphery of the game for the first hour and generally making little in the way of a meaningful contribution, to the point that you briefly found yourself wondering whether Roberto Martinez, the Portugal coach, would have the courage and conviction to substitute his captain in search of some more dynamic movement up front and the second equaliser they badly needed. That thought didn't last long. Or, to put it another way, it lasted about as long as it took Mendes to sprint away from Yamal on the Portugal left and deliver a deflected cross that looped up invitingly for Ronaldo. Although Marc Cucurella was close by, realistically there was only going to be one winner and Ronaldo volleyed home. His pace has gone now but the instinct to be in the right place at the right time when a chance comes along is as strong as ever. It was the 938th goal of Ronaldo's career – a silly number, really – and extended his own record as the leading scorer in international football in the men's game (138). 'I have not seen anyone like me. Numbers don't lie,' he said in that same interview with Aguirre in February. There's an argument we haven't seen anyone like Yamal either, certainly not in the modern game at his age. This was his 21st cap for Spain (15 direct goal involvements) and he has already played 106 times for Barcelona, scoring 25 goals and registering 34 assists for his club (per Transfermarkt). Advertisement To put those figures into perspective, when Ronaldo was Yamal's age he was still eight months away from winning his first cap for Portugal and he had featured in only 16 first-team matches for Sporting Lisbon (Lionel Messi hadn't made his debut for Argentina either at that age, in case you were wondering). Yamal's numbers are off the scale in that respect and if he continues on this trajectory, by the time he reaches Ronaldo's age he will be… don't worry, we're not going to project nearly a quarter of a century of football on the back of two seasons as a teenager. What we wouldn't rule out, though, is that Ronaldo will still be playing for Portugal at that point, keeping an ever-patient Goncalo Ramos out of the team at the age of 63. Ramos replaced Ronaldo in the 88th minute against Spain – a decision that Ronaldo essentially made himself when he dropped to the floor in the centre circle, bringing the game to a halt and cursing into the night sky after his body finally gave up on him. 'I had already felt it during the warm-up, I had been feeling it for some time,' he explained, via Record. 'But for the national team, if I had to break a leg, I would. It's a title, I had to play and I gave my all, I went as far as I could. I helped with a goal.' Whatever anyone thinks of Ronaldo, his desire to play, score and win burns as fiercely as ever, and the joy on his face in the scenes of celebration at the end was almost child-like. Yamal, Ronaldo said afterwards, is a 'phenomenon' who is going to 'win many titles and have a very long career.' It's hard to argue with any of that. Whether Yamal will be winning them at the age of 40, though, is a different matter. ()
