The Japanese manufacturer’s two driver crews have pointed to multiple accidents and problems as the reasons why they failed to overturn last year’s defeat against Ferrari in the great French classic.
Jose Maria Lopez, who crossed the finish line second in the Toyota GR010 HYBRID Le Mans Hypercar #7 shared with Kamui Kobayashi and Nyck de Vries, 14 seconds behind the winning Ferrari, explained that two punctures and two engine problems were crucial to the defeat.
“I don’t like ifs and buts, but we had the pace to win,” he told Motorsport.com. “Kamui had an engine problem, I had one in the last stint and then we had the two punctures which led to unscheduled stops.”
Lopez described the Le Mans race in which he returned to the Hypercar class in place of the injured Mike Conway as “the most difficult I have ever experienced”. “It certainly wasn’t the smoothest race for us,” he added.
He insisted that his spin at the Dunlop chicane with an hour to go, while trying to catch Nicklas Nielsen in the winning Ferrari 499P, did not decide the race.
The loss of time was roughly the same gap he suffered at the end, but he believes he would not have caught up with Nielsen because “the Ferrari was traveling so well”.
#8 Toyota Gazoo Racing Toyota GR010 – Hybrid: Sebastien Buemi, Brendon Hartley, Ryo Hirakawa
Photo by: Rainier Ehrhardt
Sebastien Buemi, Brendon Hartley and Ryo Hirakawa, who took fifth place in the sister #8 Toyota, believe the decisive moment for them came after the rain resumed and the car was spun at Mulsanne by Alessandro Pier Guidi with the second of the official Ferraris, about two hours from the end.
“I think without that spin after that little touch, we would have won the race,” he told Motorsport.com. “It was a spin that we missed. We lost something like 40 seconds and at that moment we were ahead of the #7.”
Buemi also suggested that a slow zone in the final hours was crucial to the outcome of the race.
Hartley added that the spin “pretty much put us out of the fight for the win in the last two hours. It’s as if the win slipped out of our hands,” he said.
Kobayashi suffered engine problems on Sunday morning, which Toyota Gazoo Racing Europe technical director David Floury said were caused by sensor problems which the team managed to resolve.
The second engine problem, which occurred in the final hour as Lopez tried to catch up to the Ferrari, was caused by a communication error, the team said.
One of the adjustments was in the wrong position, meaning Lopez had to correct it while chasing Nielsen.
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