Toyota Downplays 6H Sao Paulo Favorite Tag

Toyota Gazoo Racing technical director David Floury has downplayed the Japanese manufacturer’s chances of victory in Sunday’s 6 Hours of Sao Paulo despite its domination of Hyperpole on Saturday.

Kamui Kobayashi delivered the manufacturer its first pole of the FIA World Endurance Championship season aboard the No. 7 Toyota GR010 Hybrid, as stablemate Sebastien Buemi made it a front-row lockout by qualifying No. 8 car second.

Best of the rest was Matt Campbell’s No. 5 Penske Porsche 963 in third, followed by Alex Lynn’s No. 2 Cadillac V-Series.R.

Floury said he believed both Kobayashi and Buemi extracted the maximum potential from their cars in what were unseasonably cold conditions on Saturday, but cautioned that Sunday’s race, which is set to feature ambient temperatures as much as 10 degrees Celsius higher, could be a different story.

“The race will be tough,” Floury said post-qualifying. “We have to do the job. I can’t say it will be easy.

“I think the pack is pretty close together and many factors can decide the race. I don’t think there is a strong favorite.

“Porsche and Ferrari are in the fight and Cadillac are quite strong as well. Within these four manufacturers I think you stand a good chance to find the winner.

“I also mean [both] Porsche Penske and JOTA, because the JOTA cars are quite strong.

“It’s really Ferrari, four Porsches, two Toyotas and one Cadillac. BMW is not so far behind either. It will be interesting.”

Floury said that the twisty second sector of the Interlagos circuit was where the Toyota drivers were able to gain most of their time, despite the GR010 Hybrid being the joint-heaviest car in the field together with the Ferrari 499P.

“What I see is clearly in the acceleration sector, out of the last corner, we are quite weak because we have high weight and low power below 250km/h,” he explained.

“But in the middle sector it seems the car is quite ok, quite well-balanced. We still have the heaviest car… in the twisty sections we shouldn’t be fastest.”

Campbell Bullish On Long-Run Pace; Pier Guidi Downbeat

For his part, Porsche driver Campbell expressed confidence that that the works 963 could be better in race trim than it was in qualifying based on the times from Friday practice, held in somewhat warmer conditions than qualifying.

“It’s an unknown going into the race,” said the Australian driver. “Everyone has slightly different strategies in terms of how they do it [with tires], with [changing] left-side, right-side, rears only, that sort of thing.

“We have our plan, whether it’s the best plan or not we don’t know but it’s definitely the best option for us. I don’t think the performance was that bad towards the end of a stint in practice. 

“Maybe we don’t have the strongest pace at the beginning of the stint, but we are one the strongest at the end of the stint.

“Everyone is running different strategies, so it’s a complete unknown until the middle part of the race when we can get a full understanding of pit cycles and where everyone stands on performance.”

On the other hand, Ferrari driver Alessandro Pier Guidi was pessimistic about Ferrari’s chances of recovering from a disappointing qualifying showing on Saturday.

Antonio Fuoco led the charge for the Italian manufacturer in sixth aboard the No. 50 Ferrari 499P, while Pier Guidi was unable to qualify higher than ninth.

“I think we are still missing something on race pace,” Pier Guidi told Sportscar365. “Of course if the weather changes a lot, if it’s much hotter, maybe everything changes. It could be different because we never tested in hot conditions.

“Normally we are ok even in cool conditions, We are not performing worse because it’s cold. For sure we show many times high-speed tracks are better for us than low-speed tracks. It’s something quite clear.

“We improved with our knowledge of the car, but in the end the DNA of the car is this.”

John Dagys contributed to this report