Toyota Racing turned the 6 Hours of Fuji on its head in the closing hour, winning its home round of the FIA World Endurance Championship with the #8 GR010 Hybrid. Sébastien Buemi, Brendon Hartley and Ryō Hirakawa took the lead of the drivers’ standings after a bold decision to refuel but not change tyres during a late safety car. The result extends Toyota’s advantage in the manufacturers’ championship to 23 points with two rounds left.
Toyota Racing looked out of contention for a podium at Fuji Speedway with an hour left to run. Both of its cars had been knocked back by separate incidents against a strong Hypercar field, and neither looked likely to fight for the win. A single strategy call changed that.
Sébastien Buemi, Brendon Hartley and Ryō Hirakawa took victory in the #8 car and moved to the top of the drivers’ standings with two races remaining. It is the team’s tenth win at Fuji, and it stretches its lead in the manufacturers’ championship to 23 points. Toyota says the weekend drew a crowd of 72,326.
A difficult start for both cars
Poor weather forced qualifying to be cancelled, leaving both cars with work to do. The #8 lined up eighth and the #7 of Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi and Nyck de Vries started 13th on a damp track.
Buemi gained two places early on, while de Vries picked up a puncture inside the opening half-hour. His recovery drive was then cut short by a spin after contact with the #35 Alpine early in the second hour.
Both cars worked their way towards the top six over the first three hours, but the second half brought fresh problems. Early in the fifth hour, Hartley was spun at turn one by the #007 Aston Martin. At the following pit stops, Hirakawa took over in sixth. Kobayashi was running seventh in the #7 until a drive-through penalty for speeding under a full course yellow dropped the car to 12th.
The call that decided the race
A safety car with 55 minutes to go gave the #8 crew its opening. The team’s engineers judged that the interruption would run long because barriers needed repairing, so they refuelled the car for that scenario and left the tyres alone.
The gamble worked. Hirakawa led when racing resumed with 20 minutes to go, and held off the #36 Alpine in falling rain to finish 0.591 seconds clear. Kobayashi gained two positions late on to bring the #7 home eighth, keeping the Le Mans-winning trio second in the drivers’ standings, 10 points behind their team-mates.
“This is one of our best wins in a long time. I’m really proud of this one, especially because it was completely unexpected going into the last part of the race,” Buemi said. “The team made a great call on the last pit stop and it was enough to jump ahead of everyone.”
Hirakawa described the closing laps as stressful. “The track conditions were quite tricky, and the Alpine was closing quite fast. I was able to manage it, so I’m really happy, especially in Fuji,” he said.
Kobayashi, who is both team principal and a driver in the #7, was more measured about his own car’s race. “For our car, it was a bit of a difficult day and I don’t think we had a clean enough race. We were a little bit off the pace generally, so we were always chasing and that defined our day,” he said.
What it means for the title fight
With two rounds to go, Toyota now leads both championships and has its two crews first and second among the drivers — a comfortable position, but one that also means its own cars are taking points off each other. Conway pointed to the #7’s penalty as the moment the car’s day unravelled, while noting there is still time to respond.
The championship returns to Europe next for the penultimate round, the first running of the 6 Hours of Barcelona at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya on 18 October.
Source: newsroom.toyota.eu