WEC | Harakiri Toyota: “Too many mistakes and penalties, our fault”

Toyota leaves the 6 Hours of Fuji licking its wounds, but still mathematically in contention for the FIA ​​World Endurance Championship titles.

It was definitely not the home race the Japanese were expecting, with the GR010 Hybrids first showing their muscles from halfway through the race onwards, before literally committing… harakiri!

Long in contention for the podium, battling rivals to make up ground and seeing the possibility of taking a trophy loom, both the #7 and #8 made costly mistakes.

In the case of the first, the great race of Kobayashi/Conway/De Vries went to waste due to a rare but very serious mistake by the Japanese driver, who, in contention with the #5 Porsche of Matt Campbell, did not lift his foot at the braking point of turn 3 to resist it and ended up hitting it twice, breaking the rear suspension and several other things that could not be repaired immediately.

“It’s definitely my fault, but it was a very difficult race. The second Safety Car put us in difficulty. After that I tried to fight with the #5 Porsche for a couple of laps, but our lack of straight-line speed was obvious, so Matt tried to overtake in the first three corners,” explains Kobayashi, who was also given a Drive Through (suspended until the end of the season) for the incident he caused.

“Inside the third chicane we entered the corner at the same time; I realised we were going to touch, I tried to avoid it, but I couldn’t because I was on the inside kerb. Unfortunately we had a second contact while we were spinning and the damage was too serious to be repaired.”

“For the championship, I had to try; looking back, maybe I did badly, but there was also the risk of finishing much further back because cars like BMW and Alpine were really quick, in general all the LMDh were better in terms of pace and tyre management, and you could see that in the last two hours. It was definitely not our day and I feel sorry for our home fans who supported us so much. Hopefully we can come back strong for the last race in Bahrain.”

#15 BMW M Team WRT BMW M Hybrid V8: Dries Vanthoor, Raffaele Marciello, Marco Wittmann, #7 Toyota Gazoo Racing Toyota GR010 – Hybrid: Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi, Nyck de Vries

Photo by: Andreas Beil

Kobayashi and De Vries will arrive in Sakhir with 37 points to make up on Estre/Vanthoor/Lotterer, winners with their #6 Porsche and one step away from the title, with 39 points still up for grabs in the grand finale.

In Toyota, if nothing else, there is still hope for the Constructors given that at least the #8 of Buemi/Hartley/Hirakawa took home a tenth position, a small consolation at the end of a race that also saw them penalised with a Drive Through in the penultimate hour for not leaving space for the leading 963 that was lapping it, among other things with the Japanese driver who gave Estre a wheelie.

“Today it was all our fault, there is little to discuss and we cannot complain. Clearly we were too far away and we also came into contact with the Porsche #5, showing ourselves to be too aggressive”, admitted the Technical Director, David Floury, who then admits how much this race was suffered from a performance point of view, given that the average pace of the ‘black’ TGR was around +0″3 at the moment in which Kobayashi had a car with less fuel, having opted to bring forward the penultimate stop.

“We were never in the fight and overall we lacked performance. In terms of lap time, we were slower than our main competitors. If you look at Porsche, Cadillac, BMW and Alpine they are all clearly faster. So our natural position was around ninth or tenth.”

“We tried in every way to find something to gain a position and in the end a podium was taken away from us. After two and a half hours, we understood that if we didn’t try something, we wouldn’t have any chance and we would be completely out of the race. We decided to split the strategies between the two cars to make sure that one of the two could have a chance. But unfortunately the Safety Car turned out to be negative for both of them.”

Floury also didn’t like the penalty given to Hirakawa for wheeling the Porsche of Kévin Estre as the Frenchman was preparing to lap the Japanese driver.

“It’s clear that with a blue flag you incur a penalty if you ignore it for two sectors. The first time it was signaled to us at turn 8, then Estre pushed Ryo out at turn 15, even though he had space to pass, and yet we took the hit, and also a penalty. I would like to understand, because clearly I didn’t see it the same way as the stewards. And this season it’s becoming quite a frequent thing.”