Drivers from the factory Toyota operation believe the manufacturer must continue its pursuit of the Le Mans 24 Hours following its latest heartbreaking loss.

The Japanese manufacturer was the favourite to win the event this year, and its #7 car led the majority of the race until a clutch problem forced it to retire in the 10th hour.

With the #8 car having already lost 30 laps to a problem earlier in the race, and the additional third entry for Le Mans retiring not long after the #7 car, Toyota is still yet to break its duck at the race.

Kazuki Nakajima told Autosport: “We have to keep fighting and trying to win this race.

“As soon as you stop (trying), you lose the right to challenge for victory. We’ve got to come back.

“It’s the same for everybody, everybody had an issue. For us (in car #8) it happened too early for any chance of victory, but I was still hoping for cars seven and nine to have a good race.”

Kamui Kobayashi, who set a new lap record to take pole position in qualifying, added: “We will be back next year and we will have this opportunity again.

“For Toyota it’s hard but we will come back very strongly.

“We have to win this race.”

Nicolas Lapierre, who returned to Toyota’s line-up this year, described his race in the #9 car as “misery from the beginning”, and he said it’s becoming harder to believe the manufacturer does not have a curse at Le Mans.

“Everything was just misfortune,” he said. “The Kolles car went off and the (flying debris) caused damage to our car [on the first lap].

“We lost downforce and lost 35 seconds and had to change the nose.

“The next stint the door was opening and going into the night we had a problem with the number panel but we were still only one lap down.

“Everything was just misfortune. We don’t want to believe things like this (curse) but the statistics are against us.”

Kobayashi believes that the #7 car would have won the race if it could have made it back to the pits, even if it had required lengthy repairs in the garage.

“We saw the (race winning) #2 Porsche stay in the garage for a long time so we could still be ahead of them, but we couldn’t come back [to the pits],” he added.

“It’s a very hard moment because we had such amazing pace. We were so competitive.

“If we could have come back, we could change the clutch and should have won.

“There was nothing I could do. I tried everything but there was no movement in the car.”