The team principal of Toyota Gazoo Racing, Jari-Matti Latvala, says that Toyota will not stop completely the development of its current Rally1 car ahead of the hybrid era having as an example what happened to him and to his previous team.
The Japanese team has already started testing its 2022 hybrid car since last May with Juho Hanninen havind been behind the wheel of the brand-new Toyota Yaris GR.
However, an updated engine has been fitted to the current Toyota Yaris WRC at Rally Portugal and it provides more horsepower and reliability.
It is expected that Toyota will do some changes on the suspension area and on the weight of the car, while all parts of transmission area were homologated.
"I have been in a situation in the past where there was a new car coming and we stopped developing the current car and suddenly the other manufacturer was a lot more competitive", Latvala said to Motorsport.com
"We really started to struggle.
"The fact is for me we cannot stop completely the development work with the current car.
"We have to keep going until the end of the year, but for sure there are no major things coming anymore, like the engine update that came for Portugal.
"For sure the engine side there is not going to be any changes.
"The transmission side, we have homologated all the parts, we can't homologate any more parts.
"And then the rest of the things that we are trying to do on the suspension side and the weight of the car are little details where we can try to improve until the end of the year."
Finally, Latvala told about the 2022 Rally1 car and the images that were revealed during their test last May: "I must say it looks really impressive and I think the tubes at the side of the car which are coming out makes it really aggressive looking, but the purpose of those is cooling the batteries for the hybrid unit.
"We call it a new car.
"We have had the batteries installed on the car and we are able to get some feedback from those and have been driving with the batteries.
"Hopefully let's say we can get the proper whole 2022 car ready to be testing maybe at the end of July."
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