Toyota Was “Never in the Fight” In Nightmare Home Race

Toyota was “never in the fight” in its home FIA World Endurance Championship race at Fuji, believes David Floury, as a disastrous race for both GR010 Hybrid crews on home soil left the Japanese marque’s drivers’ title hopes hanging by a thread.

The title-contending No. 7 Toyota of Kamui Kobayashi, Nyck de Vries and Mike Conway was forced to retire with terminal damage after Kobayashi made contact with Matt Campbell’s No. 5 Penske Porsche 963 in the penultimate hour.

Hopes of at least finishing on the podium with the No. 8 car were dashed in the final hour when Ryo Hirakawa was handed a drive-through penalty for ignoring blue flags, dropping he, Sebastien Buemi and Brendon Hartley to tenth.

With Porsche’s No. 6 crew moving into a near-unassailable championship lead with victory at Fuji, Toyota Gazoo Racing Europe technical director Floury feels there was nothing the team could have done to fight its rivals on pure performance.

“We were never in the fight,” said Floury. “Generally we lacked performance. In terms of lap time, we were slower than our main competitors.

“If you look, the Porsche, the Cadillac, BMW and Alpine are all clearly faster. So our natural position was around P9, P10. We were pushed to find every way to find a position, and finally we had a podium taken away.”

In an attempt to get back into contention, Toyota elected to clear the No. 7 car’s ‘splash’ that would have otherwise been required at the end of the race out of the way early, with de Vries performing an extra half-stint during the fourth hour.

At the same time, the No. 8 car pursued a strategy of staying out for as long as possible in a bid to eliminate the ‘splash’ completely.

But the virtual safety car that was called in the fifth hour when the Lamborghini SC63 became stranded on track, which was followed by a full safety car, ended up compromising both cars, in particular leaving the No. 7 down the order.

“After two and a half hours, we realized that if we didn’t try something, we didn’t stand a chance and we would be completely out of contention,” explained Floury.

“We decided to split the strategies between both cars to ensure that one would have the ‘lucky ticket’. But unfortunately the safety car was bad timing for both cars.”

Kobayashi Admits to Not Handling “Pressure” Well

Looking back on the incident that put the No. 7 car out of the race, which occurred at the fast Turn 3 left-hander not long after the final restart, Kobayashi accepted responsibility.

Although the Japanese driver feels in hindsight that letting Campbell’s Porsche go would have been the wise thing to do, he conceded he was feeling the “pressure” of needing to fight up the order to try and keep Toyota’s title hopes alive heading to Bahrain.

“The situation with car No. 5 happened repeatedly for several laps,” said Kobayashi. “To be honest, the timing was bad, and neither of us was willing to back down.

“As I went into the corner, I realized we were going to make contact and I tried to avoid it, but I was completely on top of the [inside] curb and my front-right hit [car No. 5].

“The difference in power and weight [with the Porsche] due to the Balance of Performance was obvious, and looking back now, maybe I should have just given up the position. But then, we would have probably finished ninth.

“I knew that if we didn’t score big points, the championship would be difficult, and I think I wasn’t able to control the pressure of that situation well.”

While accepting full blame for the crash, Kobayashi felt that in a straight fight there was no way Toyota to compete with Porsche or the other LMDh marques in contention for a top result at the end of the race, BMW and Alpine.

“Not just Porsche, but all the LMDhs were all overwhelmingly fast, both in terms of tire usage and pure performance, so we were left with nowhere to go,” he said.

“Honestly, the last double stint, it felt like everybody else suddenly got quicker. It felt like people started showing their real pace. At that point I realized we didn’t have the pace.”

Floury Upset With Hirakawa’s Late Penalty

After Kobayashi’s crash, Toyota was still in a position to salvage a podium on home soil with the No. 8 car with Hirakawa running in third with less than 30 minutes to go.

That was until he was handed a drive-through for ignoring blue flags when the No. 6 Porsche of Kevin Estre had come up to lap Hirakawa, who had come in for his final pit stop several laps earlier than his main competitors.

An agitated Floury disputed the penalty on two counts – firstly, because he felt Hirakawa was entitled to more time to move over for Estre before being penalized, and secondly, because Estre forced Hirakawa off the track when he passed at Turn 15.

“Clearly, with a blue flag you get a penalty when you ignore it for two sectors,” said Floury. “We had a blue flag for the first time at Turn 8 [the long right-hander towards the end of the second sector] and he [Estre] pushed us off at Turn 15.

“We left room for him to go by, and he hit us, pushed us off track, and we get a penalty… I would like to understand, because clearly I have not seen the same action [as the stewards]. It is becoming quite a lot this season.”