This is Toyota Motorsport’s updated 2013 TS030 Hybrid racecar, with which the Japanese company will compete in the FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC), including this year’s edition of the Le Mans 24 Hours.

Shakedown tests of the 2013 car kicked off at the Paul Ricard circuit in southern France on Tuesday and will continue throughout the month, ahead of the first race of the season at Silverstone on April 14.

The updated TS030 Hybrid is fitted with a revised version of the Toyota Racing hybrid system first introduced in 2012. According to the Japanese carmaker, the super capacitor-based system delivers 300hp of boost automatically, on top of the 530hp generated by the 3.4 liter, normally-aspirated V8 petrol engine.

Toyota’s engineers also fine-tuned the powertrain, chassis and aerodynamics to improve power, efficiency, management of component usage and reliability, to comply to the new regulations due to be enforced in 2014.

For the 2013 WEC season, Toyota Racing will field a two car team, with drivers Alex Wurz, Nicolas Lapierre and Kazuki Nakajima running in the #7 TS030 Hybrid, and Anthony Davidson, Stéphane Sarrazin and Sébastien Buemi in the #8 car.

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