How stumbling Toyota drew first blood in the WEC's new era

It was a messy race for Toyota and perhaps a messy start to the Hypercar era for the World Endurance Championship. The Japanese manufacturer won last Saturday’s Spa 6 Hours with Sebastien Buemi, Brendon Hartley and Kazuki Nakajima, but its pair of GR010 HYBRIDs didn’t have what might be described as clean races. And the politics that many are predicting will be ever-present in the new formula of top-class prototype racing was never far away.

Toyota triumphed on a day when a pretty straightforward run for the Signatech Alpine squad’s grandfathered LMP1 car wasn’t enough to overcome two new Le Mans Hypercars that suffered a series of hiccups. Andre Negrao, Nicolas Lapierre and Matthieu Vaxiviere split the GR010s at the chequered flag, but ended up just over a minute behind the #8 car in second place.

The Alpine-Gibson A480, the ORECA design that formerly raced as the Rebellion R-13, would at worst have been right with the winning Toyota, most likely ahead of it, had it been able to go the same distance between refuelling stops. It could do a maximum of 23 laps to the Toyota’s 25 (and on one occasion 26), and therefore had to make one extra stop. That has kick-started a debate that for the moment appears nowhere near resolution.

Buemi, Hartley and Nakajima won the 2021 WEC opener in Belgium because they lost less time over the course of the six hours than team-mates Mike Conway, Jose Maria Lopez and Kamui Kobayashi. The winning #8 car had two delays totalling more than 40 seconds for pitlane infractions, whereas #7 spent the better part of a lap beached in the gravel at the Bruxelles hairpin early in the fifth hour and then was handed a drivethrough. There was more time lost at the beginning and end of the race too.

The only loss of time for the Alpine came with a deflating right-front tyre that resulted from Negrao being sideswiped by Tom Blomqvist in one of the Jota ORECA-Gibson 07s as he lunged up the inside of Eau Rouge just after the five-hour mark. The right-front wheel was damaged, but the loss of air pressure was noticed only three corners from the pits and just a couple of laps before he was due to come in anyway.

#8 Toyota Gazoo Racing Toyota GR010 - Hybrid: Sebastien Buemi, Kazuki Nakajima, Brendon Hartley

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

The incident cost the car maybe five or six seconds. Negrao was leading when he pitted, the fifth time in the race that the Alpine had hit the front, but Signatech boss Philippe Sinault knew that victory was a long shot.

“When you are in front you start to dream,” said Sinault, “but we knew that it wasn’t possible to win.”

The problem for Alpine is that its chassis can’t accommodate as much energy – which means plain old petrol for a non-hybrid car such as the A480 – as it is allowed by the rules. The energy figures, prescribed as a maximum number of megajoules per stint in the Balance of Performance table, are based on the cars achieving 12 laps of the 8.47-mile Circuit de la Sarthe at Le Mans. Rebellion typically did 11 laps during last year’s 24 Hours, though admittedly with its 4.5-litre Gibson V8 pushing out more power than this season.

“We are at maximum capacity,” explained Sinault. “It is not possible to put a bigger fuel tank in because the car is homologated like this.”

"We want to have the chance of a real victory, not just to be lucky because the other cars have problems" Philippe Sinault, Alpine

The problem can be traced back to the origins of the car. It was hastily conceived for the 2018-19 WEC superseason as the R-13 and is built around the same monocoque as ORECA’s 07 LMP2 prototype. LMP2s refuelled more often than LMP1s, and disparity in stint length has grown with the introduction of the Hypercar class.

“Something has to be done and I hope something can change,” said Sinault. “I will try to convince the Automobile Club de l’Ouest [the series promoter and co-writer of the rules with the FIA], but they already know the problem. We want to have the chance of a real victory, not just to be lucky because the other cars have problems.”

Perhaps it was Toyota which had the luck at Spa: its good fortune was that Alpine wasn’t in a position to exploit its problems, after what Toyota Gazoo Racing Europe technical director Pascal Vasselon described as “not a totally great race for us”. He reckoned it was “positive to have two cars at the end of the race”, especially since #7 hadn’t turned a wheel at the start of the week. Not so good, he suggested, were the mistakes in the pits.

#36 Alpine Elf Matmut Alpine 480 Gibson: Andre Negrao, Nicolas Lapierre, Matthieu Vaxiviere

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

Buemi had been sent on his way too early at his first pitstop. The rules demand that the refuelling hose remains attached to the car for a minimum of 35s if it has used its full energy allocation (or a percentage of 35s if it hasn’t), but the refueller pulled up the nozzle the moment the fuel had stopped going in, as was the procedure in LMP1 days. The mistake resulted in a penalty of 36.4s taken at the next pitstop. The figure was derived, as per the regulations, by multiplying the time gained by four and adding another five. A second penalty of 5s was subsequently accrued by the car for an unsafe release.

The #7 Toyota also had problems in the pits early on: it was slow away at its first stop, and then needed a top-up of gearbox oil at its second. Conway had led the initial going, before being told to cede position to Buemi after only 10 laps. Toyota’s strategy book always calls for the faster car to be allowed through, though the Swiss only put a second and a half on his team-mate before the pitstops began.

The gap was about the same when the #8 took its refuelling penalty, which dropped Hartley 15 or so seconds behind Lopez. That gap had increased to nearly half a minute by the halfway mark. The #7 car looked pretty much home and dry from the outside, but inside the car the drivers were having to deal with what Vasselon described as “a sensitivity on front-wheel locking”.

The problem was implicated in a tangle at the Bus Stop between Lopez and Richard Lietz in the #91 GTE Pro class Porsche some time before Kobayashi got caught out at Bruxelles.

“We were struggling with the front end a little bit, but we still had good pace,” said the Japanese. “Then the fronts locked up and I couldn’t unlock them – I don’t know why.”

Kobayashi went across the asphalt runoff and into the smallest of gravel traps. The Toyota was unable to reverse out, and needed a tow from a course vehicle. With the delay went any chance of the reigning world champions beginning the defence of their title with a victory. Conway and co finished a lap down at the finish after Kobayashi had to take a drivethrough for Lopez’s earlier misdemeanour and then briefly stopped on the Les Combes escape road to undertake a reset of the electronics.

#7 Toyota Gazoo Racing Toyota Gr010 - Hybrid: Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi, Jose Maria Lopez

Photo by: Erik Junius

One team that did begin its attempt to retain a crown in style was United Autosports in LMP2, which it led for every lap bar five during pitstop sequences. Its ORECA-Gibson 07 driven by Filipe Albuquerque, Phil Hanson and Fabio Scherer stood head and shoulders over the rest of the field at Spa. It topped the times – the overall times – in two of the four sessions of the pre-event Prologue test (and the class order in another), and was quickest LMP2 throughout the meeting proper, Albuquerque ending up on pole by more than half a second.

The team was paid a compliment by Vasselon after the race. He said, only half in jest, that Toyota had competitors from three categories last weekend: grandfathered LMP1, United Autosports, and LMP2.

Toyota’s technical boss had been outspoken about the pace of the LMP2s throughout the week. Despite a series of measures designed to ensure that they are slower than the Hypercars – a reduction of 65bhp, an increase of 20kg, and the requirement to run low-downforce Le Mans aero at all races – three LMP2s bested Toyota in the two-day Prologue on Monday and Tuesday of race week.

Toyota called for an immediate change to restore a proper gap between the top two classes of the WEC. The ACO and the FIA ruled out any changes for Spa during a press conference on Wednesday, though Thierry Bouvet, the ACO’s technical director, explained there would be what he described as a “correction” to the BoP tables for Hypercar.

United Autosports car would have been even further ahead but for two penalties: a 5s hold for an unsafe release in the pits, and a drivethrough for an FCY infraction. But such was its dominance that it still finished a lap up on its nearest pursuer

‘Correction’ was actually the wrong word. What the ACO and the FIA did – and their actions only fully emerged after the race – was to give the Hypercars a bit more power. The rules include an atmospheric coefficient so there is no disadvantage to running a normally aspirated engine at altitude: the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps sits at approximately 600m in the Ardennes mountain range. This was removed ahead of the start of the meeting. Toyota gained 18kW or 24bhp, and Gibson was able to tweak its restricted V8 in the Alpine upwards by the same amount. Vasselon explained that the power hike was worth 0.55s per lap.

Toyota wasn’t suggesting that it was likely to be beaten by the best of the LMP2s given a reliable run from either of the GR010s, rather that there needs to be a clear gap between the categories, no matter the state of the tyres the cars are on or the fuel load they are running. ‘Class stratification’ was the fancy term being bandied about the paddock.

United was predictably closest of the LMP2s to the Hypercars in the race as champions Albuquerque and Hanson, and sportscar rookie Scherer swept to a dominant victory. The car was still a minute down on the #7 Toyota at the finish, but Hanson did ever so briefly get in front of both GR010s at the start. He was ahead out of La Source, but before Eau Rouge he was pushed down to second by Conway in the Toyota that Kobayashi had qualified on pole, and Buemi passed him before Les Combes.

#22 United Autosports USA Oreca 07 - Gibson: Philip Hanson, Fabio Scherer, Filipe Albuquerque

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

There’s not a lot to say about United’s run to a fifth WEC class victory – or a fifth in six attempts since its first in Bahrain at the end of 2019. Hanson’s fastest lap in class probably deserves a mention, as does his composure when he faced a brief challenge from Giedo van der Garde in the Racing Team Nederland ORECA. Silver-rated Scherer, it must be said, looked impressive on his LMP2 debut and was only half a second down on his team-mates on a 25-lap average. As for Albuquerque, all the superlatives have probably already been used over the past year or so.

It’s probably also worth recording that United has quickly got to grips with the one-make Goodyear tyres after a couple of seasons on Michelins. It did run the Goodyears at the European Le Mans Series opener at Barcelona last month, but not the 2021 C-spec tyre on which everyone ran at Spa.

The United car would have been even further ahead but for two penalties: a 5s hold for an unsafe release in the pits, and a drivethrough for an FCY infraction. Albuquerque even made a mistake – a quick trip across the runoff at the Bus Stop – as the race drew to a close, but such was United’s dominance that it still finished a lap up on its nearest pursuer.

Jota came through to take second and third with its two ORECAs, team regulars Anthony Davidson, Antonio Felix da Costa and Roberto Gonzalez beating the sister car of Blomqvist, Stoffel Vandoorne and Sean Gelael home by 12s.

Davidson, da Costa and Gonzalez had to fight back from an early delay. Gonzalez was hit up the rear at the start, which resulted in the car losing vital seconds when the rear deck was replaced at the first pitstop. Davidson had been ahead of Blomqvist when he took a drivethrough for an FCY infringement, before the positions were reversed when his fellow countryman was pinged for the incident with the Alpine.

The best of the Aurus-badged G-Drive ORECAs run by Algarve Pro had looked set for second in the hands of Nyck de Vries, Roman Rusinov and Franco Colapinto until it retired with an oil leak at the prompting of race control. The team had been topping up the car at every stop until then.

The TDS Racing-run RTN ORECA in which Job van Uitert and Frits van Eerd joined van der Garde was the fourth LMP2 car home, a lap down on the Jota cars. That gave it the top step of the podium in the new Pro-Am sub-class.

#38 JOTA Oreca 07 - Gibson: Roberto Gonzalez, Antonio Felix Da Costa, Anthony Davidson

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images