Toyota: “Even One Point Would Be Welcome” in 6H Spa

Photo: Toyota

Toyota Gazoo Racing Europe technical director David Floury admits that “even one point would be welcome” for the Japanese manufacturer in Saturday’s 6 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps given the lack of competitiveness of the GR010 Hybrid.

The Cologne outfit’s two challengers concluded Friday’s first part of qualifying 15th and 16th-fastest, marking the first time that Toyota has failed to get at least one car into Hyperpole since the introduction of the two-stage format last year.

Toyota’s best lap, set by Brendon Hartley in the No. 8 car, was exactly 1.8 seconds shy of the top time set by Ferrari driver Antonio Fuoco, who went on to score pole.

Kamui Kobayashi was just three thousandths further back in the sister No. 7 Toyota.

The poor showing for the two GR010 Hybrids following a significant change in the Balance of Performance for Spa, with Toyota carrying the most weight while also having the least power under 250 km/h of the eight Hypercar manufacturers.

Floury told reporters post-qualifying that Toyota’s performance didn’t come as a shock in the circumstances.

“How can you be happy when you are in this situation?” he asked rhetorically. “Our performance is similar to Porsche. There is a logic there, but I cannot go into details.

“We were expecting to be the seventh [fastest] manufacturer, just ahead of Aston Martin, and this is what we saw, so there is no real surprise.

“The two cars are within a few thousandths of a second, so generally when it’s like this, you know you are close to your potential.”

Looking ahead to the race, Floury added: “For sure we don’t have the cards in our hand. We have to play the ones we have and try to do the best job we can.

“We are here to try and fight for the championship, and unfortunately we are not in a situation where we can do that.

“Given the situation we have been in since the start of the season, we are trying to do damage limitation. The target is to score points; even one point would be welcome.

“But if you ask me if this was the target coming into the weekend, with what is recognized as the reference [team], the best in class, then for sure not.”

Reflecting on qualifying, Hartley admitted that a track limits violation cost him the chance to go marginally faster, but said he did not think the mistake had a major bearing on the No. 8 Toyota’s final grid position.

Hartley told Sportscar365: “I had to back out of the first lap due to a track limits infringement, and I took a bit of juice out of the tires, maybe one or two tenths. But in the end I was just ahead of Kamui, so I think we extracted most of it.

“Others were improving on their second laps, but when you have less weight, you put less stress on the tires.

“We were fighting with Porsche for the championship last year, now we are fighting to be outside of the top ten. But when you look on paper at all the details, we were expecting to be the seventh-fastest.”

The New Zealander however struck a marginally more optimistic tone for Toyota’s chances of making progress in the race.

“In the race we know there can be opportunities,” he said. “As we saw yesterday [in Free Practice 2], there can be red flags, full-course yellows.

“So we have to keep it clean, stay optimistic and try and score points. That’s the goal.”