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BMW and Nissan still had open cars that were ACO legal. Nissan bailed due to a financial crunch and BMW ditched the LMR program aside from an ALMS run for F1. Bad PR and prioritizing F1 and DTM killed the Mercedes program, but Toyota still had one year under contract for the GT-One program.
Problem there was that the ACO (and also probably the ALMS by proxy) introduced new rules that limited all LMP cars, including LMGTPs to 4650mm long instead of the old 4900mm max. That meant that Toyota would've had to have rebodied the GT-One with new front and rear clips to meet the 4650mm max length. They decided that it was time and money better spent on getting their F1 program ready than have TMG design a car that was probably one and done since Toyota only committed the GT-One program to essentially LM only and never did a full racing season anywhere, which might have justified such an investment.
Fact is that Audi have constantly been at LM and in an ACO sanction racing series prototype classes in some form since 1999. Many others have come and gone in the same period--and most have stayed away except for Toyota and Porsche. Even Porsche didn't have a consistent presence in prototypes until the current program, which is due to run in some form until at least 2020.
On to Spa: Any word on Audi's aero package yet?
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