It’s been a very tough 2015 FIA WEC season so far for Toyota – Leapfrogged by Audi and Porsche they have looked off colour. The DSC Editor caught up with Alex Wurz at the Nurburgring test earlier this weeks to ask the man who has started more races than any other for Toyota about the recovery plan and about his own future with the team.

The programme this year is not where you would like it to be – you’ve made a jump but not as big a jump as Audi or Porsche.

What are the team doing at the moment to try to close that gap?

“First I have to be very blunt. The reason we are where we are is not because we’ve done something wrong or that we don’t know what to do it’s because we just don’t have the resources.

“That’s not the only answer but it is a large part of the problem that we are facing this season.

“With the new rules Toyota had reached very high levels with aero last season. Our competitors had very cleverly seen what was happening and using their resources have improved their aero and power to reduce lap times significantly for the season, speaking as a sportsman by a REALLY cool amount! Speaking as one of their competitors it’s not so cool – but they deserve their success so far this year.

“As for the answer to the question, what are we doing about it? We are hoping to raise more resources and budget to address the issues.

“We know what the issues are, we know what we would do with them but we simply do not have the resource right now to address them to the fullest extent that we can.

“For now we are optimising everything we can that TMG has under their full control, optimising the chassis and how it works with the tyres for instance/

“It’s relatively easy to see that the mixture of fuel efficiency to power, and to hybrid power, that whilst we have made progress, we have improved our lap times on every track we have been to, we have dropped behind the others. It’s therefore in our drivetrain that the bigger progress could come.

“We’re working hard too though on next year’s car. That’s going on with full gas right now.

“As is normal we expect to have that car running as a full 2016 car in January or February. It all depends on company philosophy, an engineer would debut it in March!

“So for all the things that come together to create that you work backwards. How far can we push on in the wind tunnel or in CFD before we have to commit to production?

“So we are already well into that process, concepts, ideas and drawings for next year’s car already exist so we can progress with packaging and the aero team can run with first models, a normal ongoing process as TMG has done since they started.”

Where do you think Toyota will be strongest in relation to Audi and Porsche for the remainder of 2015?

“I think it will be tough for us everywhere. Shanghai has suited us in the past for unknown reasons, perhaps last year was tyre choice more than anything else. Hopefully that might work again for us?

“Perhaps here (Nurburgring) too, in the wet? The bottom line though is that if you are down on your drivetrain efficiency and power output you’re probably going to struggle on all of the tracks.

“The key now is to translate that frustration into a hunger to improve and not into demotivation.”

A story was circulating before Le Mans that you were going to make a decision on your future after Le Mans. That didn’t sound terribly much like you?

(Smiling) “It was completely mistaken in the question, and in the answer!

“We are in the normal process, my contract is up at the end of the season, exactly as has been the case since I started racing. The team and I will sit down, usually in September to discuss the way forward. No drama!”

GG