Conway Pleased to ‘Claw Back’ Some of No. 7 Toyota’s Deficit

Mike Conway was pleased that his Monza-winning No. 7 Toyota Gazoo Racing crew managed to ‘claw back’ some of the ground that it lost at prior FIA World Endurance Championship rounds.

Conway, Jose Maria Lopez and Kamui Kobayashi took their third win of the season with the No. 7 Toyota GR010 Hybrid, beating the No. 50 Ferrari 499P by 16.5 seconds.

It has been a boom or bust campaign for the No. 7 crew, considering the other two rounds at Portimao and Le Mans presented them with significant setbacks.

A likely podium run at Portimao was thwarted by a faulty series-mandated sensor. More points were then missed at Le Mans when Kobayashi slowed to avoid a car in front that had braked too early before a slow zone, causing two others to pile into his Toyota.

It left the two-time WEC champions with a 41-point deficit to their championship-leading teammates in the No. 8 car, but that margin was slashed to 23 points at Monza.

“We’d like to claw our way back as far up in the championship as we can, so great to get a win here,” Conway told Sportscar365.

“That’s three in a season so far, the most of anybody. We’ll try and keep it up until the season ends.

“[It was] good for us to kind of claw our way back and finish in front of car 50. We’re gonna have to do that really for the next [two] races to jump in front but everyone’s doing a great job on our car, so we just wrant to continue.

“We know we’re strong and I think the BoP is going to fluctuate throughout the rest of the year.

“Peugeot showed really strong pace here so I think Fuji will probably be better for them with the way it looks now. But still, we’re here to fight so we’ll do the best we can for the rest of the year.”

Conway acknowledged that the weighting of the WEC points system in favor of Le Mans, the longest race of the year, means that the No. 7 Toyota remains an outside candidate for the title with two races left.

“Unfortunately we had a bad finish at Portimao and Le Mans so it’s really dented our championship,” he said. “If it wasn’t for that, if we had a good result at Portimao maybe we’d still be…

“I mean, the problem is Le Mans is [that it’s] double-points and it really kills you when you don’t finish there.

“I think you can see that our car crew’s done a great job all year. It’s only things that have been out of our hands really that have taken things away from us.

“We’ve just got to continue doing what we’re doing. What else can you do?”

Toyota “Killed the Competition” on Tire Consistency

A crucial element of Toyota’s fourth win of the WEC campaign was its consistent pace over the course of a slick tire double stint, according to technical director Pascal Vasselon.

The winning car raced on Michelin’s hard compound tire all the way until its final pit stop during the final hour when it fitted mediums for Kobayashi’s run to the flag.

“If you look at things, we have killed the competition on the second stint,” Vasselon reckoned.

“Tire management is really where we create a big, big gap. This is where the gaps have been [increased] like in Sebring and Portimao.

“But on the raw pace, there are several cars that are within one-tenth.

“If you look at the raw pace, many cars are in the same ballpark on new tires. Where we really pull a gap is on the second stint.”

Davey Euwema contributed to this report