to take ninth place in the race with the lone No. 27 entry, which ended the race 25 laps behind the winning Porsche 911 GT1. Their 1999 24 Hours of Le Mans started bitterly after the team was plagued by multiple Michelin tyre failures, the situation becoming somewhat reminiscent of 1998, when the No. 1 and No. 2 car were retired. Martin Brundle in the No. 1 Toyota suffered a puncture at high speed on the Mulsanne Straight, the cars rear suspension was badly damaged and he was unable to get back to the pits. The No. 2 Toyota being driven by Thierry Boutsen was next to go when he suffered a high speed crash under the Dunlop bridge due to a rapid deflation. The car was destroyed and Boutsen suffered injury to his lower back. At the break of dawn, the No. 15 BMW was almost a lap ahead of the No. 3 Toyota which had been quietly cruising around at a steady pace. With this sniff of a win Ukyo Katayama put the foot down in the Toyota and set the fastest lap of the race. He narrowed the gap to less than a minute till again a tyre blowout befell the Toyota team again. Katayama was however able to return to the pits for new tyres and continued. He managed to finish second after a valiant effort placing first in the GT-P class. However, they fell short of the overall victory at Le Mans, which would have made them only the second Japanese manufacturer to get an overall win (Mazda being the first in 1991). The GT-One raced only once more, a single entrant appearing in the 1999 Le Mans Fuji 1000km. Although the race mostly consisted of Japanese teams, thus leaving out most of the manufacturers that had competed at Le Mans, Toyota still had to compete against rival Nissan, who also entered their R391. In the end the GT-One would fall short once again, finishing second and only one lap behind the winning R391. The GT-One program was not continued into 2000, Toyota instead turning TTE into leaders of the new Toyota F1 team. This would mark a hiatus in Toyota's attempts at Le Mans until the 2012 season, over a decade later, when Toyota decided to once again contest at the top tier of sports car racing. Toyota TS030 Hybrid In October 2011, Toyota