Toyota Gazoo Racing was on course for victory at the Lone Star Le Mans in Texas when a hydraulic problem stopped the leading #7 TR010 Hybrid with just 11 minutes left. The sister #8 car lost its own podium chance to a drive-through penalty and unlucky safety car timing before recovering to sixth. Despite the double setback, Toyota leaves round five of the 2026 FIA World Endurance Championship with a bigger lead in the manufacturers’ standings.
Round five of the 2026 FIA World Endurance Championship at the Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas, turned into one of the most painful afternoons of Toyota’s season. The #7 TR010 Hybrid of Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi and Nyck de Vries was leading comfortably in the closing stages when a hydraulic failure ended the run, according to the team.
How the race unfolded
Toyota started from seventh and ninth on the grid. De Vries and Sébastien Buemi worked their way into the top six in the opening laps, after which the two crews split their fuel strategies. The #8 pitted early to use clear track, and both cars were running inside the top three during the first two hours.
A safety car around half distance reset those strategies and closed the field up. At the restart, de Vries made three moves into turn one to take the lead, and Kobayashi then held first place under pressure from the two Alpines as the race moved towards its final hour.
Two ways to lose a podium
The #8 crew of Buemi, Brendon Hartley and Ryō Hirakawa looked like a genuine podium contender. Hirakawa was running third with 90 minutes to go when a drive-through penalty for speeding in the pit lane dropped him to seventh. A virtual safety car shortly afterwards made things worse: the car had just taken a fuel stop under green-flag conditions, so rivals who pitted under the VSC gained time and the #8 fell to 14th.
A full safety car followed automatically. When racing resumed with 45 minutes remaining, de Vries set new fastest laps to pull clear at the front — until the hydraulic issue affected his power steering and sent the #7 into the garage with 11 minutes left.
“It was a very unfortunate race for us. We had been strong all the way through. For almost six hours we had a great race. Obviously when you lose the hydraulics, there is nothing you can do. We had to retire the car. It was a big opportunity for us to score a lot of points, so obviously it’s tough to take. But this is endurance racing. We need to learn and improve so we can come back stronger for our home race,” said team principal and driver Kamui Kobayashi.
Buemi salvaged something from the day with a strong final stint, passing several rivals to bring the #8 back into the points and across the line sixth.
The championship picture
The damage was smaller than it might have been. Toyota extended its lead in the manufacturers’ World Championship to nine points, and the #7 crew remains level on points at the top of the drivers’ standings with three rounds still to run. The #8 crew has closed to within 11 points.
Conway pointed to that as the day’s only upside: “That was not the way we envisioned the end of the race. Everything was looking good until those last few minutes. We’re all gutted because everyone did a great job and I think we deserved the win. Luckily our competition for the World Championship didn’t score well either, so that’s the only small consolation.”
Hartley was blunt about the missed opportunity: “That was a brutal finish for the team. We definitely had the pace to have two cars on the podium today, so it hurts to give it away.”
What it means
With three races left and the drivers’ title tied at the top, reliability now matters as much as pace for Toyota. The team says its cars had the speed in Austin, which is the encouraging part; converting that into finishes is the job for the rest of the season.
The next round is Toyota’s home race, the 6 Hours of Fuji, on 27 September.
Source: newsroom.toyota.eu