Hirakawa: Toyota’s “Very Bad” Races Source of Extra Motivation

Toyota driver Ryo Hirakawa has described the team’s “two very bad races” at Sao Paulo and the Circuit of The Americas as a source of extra motivation for its home round of the FIA World Endurance Championship this weekend at Fuji.

The Japanese manufacturer is coming off a pair of difficult races, with no points scored between its two GR010 Hybrids in Brazil and a best finish of ninth with the No. 8 car Hirakawa shares with Sebastien Buemi and Brendon Hartley in the wet at COTA.

Toyota Gazoo Racing Europe technical director David Floury described the latter event as “one of the worst races we have ever done” and admitted that Porsche and Ferrari, which contested the win in the difficult conditions, did a better job.

Ahead of the team’s home race, Hirakawa said he believes Fuji Speedway — traditionally a happy hunting ground for Toyota — should be a more favorable circuit than COTA for the GR010 Hybrid as the team looks to bounce back from its recent difficulties.

“We have had, I would say, two very bad races, and this we need to admit,” Hirakawa told Sportscar365. “But I think maybe it has been good for the team somehow to show that we need to improve even more. We are all motivated.

“Other manufacturers are improving a lot. We don’t have such a big amount of room to improve, but we need to find some tenths to maximize the performance.

“At Fuji there are two big braking events that should be good for us. It would have been nice if weather was hotter, as that would play to our strengths.

“I think in sector three you need a good rear, so I think we should be better than the others there. We have no excuses.”

Looking back on this month’s COTA race, Hirakawa said he believes Toyota’s weakness in the wet and the track layout were both factors behind the team’s lack of performance.

“Somehow we couldn’t switch on the tire, and it was a bad spiral,” he recalled. “I think others improved more than us. I guess we underestimated it a little bit.

“We did a couple of wet tests in Paul Ricard last year, and it was not that bad, but I guess Austin is kind of a unique track that doesn’t suit us, so maybe it’s a mix of everything. High-speed corners are where we struggle more.

“This year at Le Mans we were not strong in the Porsche Curves, and COTA has these kind of high-speed corners. Maybe it’s the reason, but we are still analyzing.”

Mike Conway, who returns to the No. 7 Toyota lineup this weekend after missing the COTA race due to injury, tempered expectations for the Japanese marque’s home race.

The British driver highlighted Porsche, which won last year’s Fuji race, and Cadillac, which took pole on the same weekend, as two of the manufacturers he expects to be strong.

“It’s a good track for us, but the last few races have been tough, so we’ll do what we can,” Conway told Sportscar365. “I expect the competition to be very hard.

“We didn’t have the pace [at Fuji] last year. We had no chance against Porsche, and I feel like Cadillac threw the race away; they should have won it. I expect Cadillac to be good looking on paper at what they have, and Porsche will also be strong.

“Those two I’m not sure we can match, and hopefully we can fight Ferrari. They have struggled a lot at this track compared to others, but they have made a lot of progress too, and the tracks they struggled at last year haven’t been so bad for them this year.”

Conway said he didn’t consider Toyota’s lack of pace in the wet at COTA to be a surprise considering the team’s past struggles in mixed conditions.

“We know there are some conditions where we are weak, and it’s been something we have wanted to address,” he said. “Wet, and even in greasy conditions, when the track was drying out, we were not getting quicker while everyone else was gaining pace.

“We have seen that a couple of times. It’s our tire interaction and something else we know we can do better. But there’s no sticking-plaster solution.”