Buemi Expects Hypercar Rivals to “Get Stronger” Over Season

Sebastien Buemi anticipates that Toyota Gazoo Racing’s Hypercar rivals will “get stronger” over the course of the FIA World Endurance Championship season after the Japanese manufacturer dominated at Sebring.

Reigning champion Toyota claimed a one-two at last month’s 1000-mile race in Florida, where the No. 7 lineup of Jose Maria Lopez, Mike Conway and Kamui Kobayashi beat their No. 8 teammates Buemi, Ryo Hirakawa and Brendon Hartley by two seconds.

After being beaten by Hypercar debutant Ferrari AF Corse in qualifying, Toyota bounced back in the race and shrugged off the early opposition to take a clear victory.

However, four-time 24 Hours of Le Mans winner Buemi feels that the other Hypercar teams, many of which were racing in the class for the first time at Sebring, will get more competitive as the seven-round season moves on.

Ferrari, Porsche, Cadillac and Floyd Vanwall Racing Team all made their Hypercar debuts last month.

“It’s very important to score [points] initially,” Buemi told Sportscar365.

“We can also expect the competitors to improve throughout the year. We can expect them to get stronger, so it will get more difficult to take the points.

“For us, the most important thing is to have the reliability and use all the potential opportunities to score many points.

“The beginning is good [for that] because we all know they are going to get stronger throughout the year.”

Ahead of next weekend’s 6 Hours of Portimao, Buemi suggested that the more conventional nature of the Portuguese circuit compared with Sebring could bring Peugeot back into the game after the French manufacturer struggled at the season-opener.

“I would expect people like Peugeot and Ferrari to potentially be stronger,” he said when asked about how Toyota’s rivals might respond at Portimao.

“Just because they’ve been testing at Portimao quite a lot. It’s also true that Ferrari tested at Sebring.

“It’s a very smooth track, so somehow I expect [Peugeot] to be, in comparison, much better because they suffered over the bumps [at Sebring].

“For Cadillac and a team like Porsche… Porsche tested [in Europe] but Cadillac did not.

“I will do my very best to try to win the race and get some points back on car No. 7. The most important thing is reliability and making sure the car is strong from the beginning to the end.”

Buemi, Hartley and Kazuki Nakajima won the WEC’s first race at Portimao in 2021, although the Toyota GR010 Hybrid has received several updates since that first season of Hypercar.

“We were at the very early stages and still having lots of issues,” Buemi recalled.

“I basically expect our car to be much better than when we first drove there.

“But then it’s difficult to say in comparison to the others, because it’s true that in the past we expected to suffer a lot at Sebring but in the end, we did well.

“It’s also true that on the very smooth tracks like Fuji and Bahrain, Peugeot were very close to us. They were not at Sebring.

“Yes, I expect our car to be much better, but I cannot anticipate what the others will be like.

“I expect the field to be quite tight together, because it’s a bit of a shorter track. I expect it to be clearly challenging racing around that track with all those GTs.”

Buemi added that another variable for Portimao is the fact that the Hypercar category’s Balance of Performance figures are different from the ones used at Sebring.

In the fixed BoP for Portimao, Spa and Le Mans, all cars except the Vanwall Vandervell 680 Gibson and the Glickenhas 007 Pipo will be lighter than they were at Sebring.

The Toyota has the biggest weight reduction of 19 kg, followed by the Ferrari 499P which is 17 kg lighter. Maximum power output and energy usage per stint have been reduced as well, by varying amounts per car.

“We had that special BoP for Sebring and a fixed one for Portimao, Spa and Le Mans,” said Buemi. “I guess it might be a bit different [to Sebring] so we’ll have to wait.

“If we can leave Portimao being strong, then I will be quite confident that we should be strong at Spa and Le Mans.

“Maybe with that adjustment, things are slightly different. I don’t know – we will see.”