The chasm Toyota’s rivals must bridge before Le Mans

There was muted celebration, talk of steps taken and progress made, even gaps closed. But for all the other Hypercar class manufacturers there was still the dawning realisation last weekend that Toyota remains out of sight in the World Endurance Championship. The Japanese manufacturer again dominated on the Algarve on Sunday, even if the winning GR010 HYBRID finished a single lap clear rather than the two laps by which the marque triumphed at Sebring last month, and it failed to get one of its two cars to the finish cleanly.

Sebastien Buemi, Brendon Hartley and Ryo Hirakawa took victory in the Portimao 6 Hours with ease. The only real hiccup for the reigning WEC champions was a slow start from Buemi — “I was too conservative”, he said — that left his GR010 Le Mans Hypercar behind the best of the Ferraris in third for three laps. When he finally got ahead of the Italian car started by Nicklas Nielsen on lap four, Buemi was nearly five seconds down on team-mate Mike Conway.

That gap went up to as much as seven seconds, but Buemi was able to close down that advantage and move into the lead before the first round of pitstops. The Swiss was then edging away when problems struck the second of the two Toyotas, which in light of the marque’s supremacy turned the second round of the 2023 WEC into a one-car race. The torque sensor mandated by rulemakers the FIA and the Automobile Club de l’Ouest on the left-rear driveshaft of the #7 Toyota failed, forcing the car into the pits for a protracted stop. Eleven minutes were lost while the entire corner was changed, restricting Briton Conway and team-mates Kamui Kobayashi and Jose Maria Lopez to a ninth-place finish.

Everything pointed to the race at the Autodromo Internacional do Algarve being another close one between the two Toyotas. On their fastest 50 laps, there was only 0.005s between them. But the winning car was the faster of the two at the time when the race was effectively decided when Conway had to pit for a new corner - the fastest way to replace the driveshaft - after 50 laps. “When we started I had a bit of understeer, but I played with the anti-roll bars and the car became much quicker,” said Buemi. “I was able to close down Mike and was pulling a gap when he had to pit with their problem. I felt like the car was really coming to me.”

The only other problem of sorts for the crew of the winning Toyota was the hand injury Buemi picked up driving for Envision Racing in the recent Sao Paulo Formula E round. His right wrist remained heavily strapped throughout the weekend, and he admitted that the proliferation of tight corners on the Portuguese circuit’s 2.89-mile length was an issue. Buemi, who said he had “some good painkillers”, admitted he was driving one-handed at times.

Aside from a slow start and Buemi's wrist injury, it was a straightforward charge to victory for the #8 Toyota squad

There was inevitably disappointment at Toyota given that Conway and co left Portugal with only two points to add to the 38 they garnered for winning the Sebring 1000 Miles in March. There was also disappointment that an FIA component had failed - a first, it seems - and that Toyota had been denied permission to push on in default mode.

Ferrari was again best of the rest, Antonio Fuoco, Miguel Molina and Nielsen taking second place aboard their 499P LMH. They went a lap down in the penultimate hour, and briefly got back on the lead lap after a
safety car with an hour to go before a more representative margin was restored.

There were no heroics in qualifying this time from the Italian manufacturer: Fuoco had been on pole at Sebring, but Nielsen languished the better part of a second and a half behind polewinner Hartley in qualifying. The gap on Saturday was not quite what it seemed, however. Hartley and Kobayashi qualified on the softer of the two Michelin tyres available, whereas Ferrari went for a medium compound. The tyre choices of the WEC’s current top two makes might also be key in explaining a bigger gap in race pace, too. Two Ferraris exclusively raced on the mediums, whereas the Toyotas each ran more than one set of the softs. Making judgements wasn’t easy given that there was a revised Balance of Performance in place, although it was one devised to give all the cars the same potential as at Sebring.

"We tried not to have any kind of cliff or give-up of the tyres. We tried the opposite approach [to Sebring] to have flat degradation. In hindsight maybe we went far the other way" Giuliano Salvi

A second-place finish to go with the third from the US race was “a natural step forward”, reckoned Giuliano Salvi, Ferrari’s sportscar race and testing manager. Ferrari definitely improved in terms of stint length – it was pretty much matching Toyota – and made some progress in terms of tyre degradation, the big issue it faced at Sebring. But Salvi admitted that Ferrari and its AF Corse team might have overreacted and gone too conservative. “We tried not to have any kind of cliff or give-up of the tyres,” he explained. “We tried the opposite approach [to Sebring] to have flat degradation. In hindsight maybe we went far the other way, but every time we put the car on the ground we learn something.”

Ferrari got both its 499Ps through the eight hours at Sebring without technical problems, but at Portimao its second entry shared by James Calado, Alessandro Pier Guidi and Antonio Giovinazzi was delayed by a brake-by-wire issue. That meant the drivers had to rely more on the conventional hydraulic brakes and less on the retardation provided by the front-axle hybrid system. It was plain to see in the pitstops — plumes of smoke and clouds of carbon dust streamed from the front brakes — as well as on the stopwatch. That Pier Guidi managed to bring the ailing car home sixth, admittedly three laps down on the winning Toyota, was a testament to his technical skills and perhaps bravery. “The car was really finished,” reckoned Salvi.

Ferrari was able to close the gap to Toyota at the front while battling its own technical issues

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

The delays for one Toyota and one Ferrari meant there was the prize of a podium on offer for one of the other manufacturers in Hypercar. Laurens Vanthoor, Kevin Estre and Andre Lotterer grabbed the final piece of silverware on a good weekend for Porsche Penske Motorsport: the previous day, the 963 LMDh had taken its maiden victory in the IMSA SportsCar Championship.

Like the Long Beach win, third in Portugal owed something to good fortune. The Ganassi-run Cadillac V-Series.R LMDh shared by Richard Westbrook, Earl Bamber and Alex Lynn, which touched wheels on European asphalt for the first time in free practice, wasn’t far behind, though it was classified a lap adrift. It was also the faster car on the day.

The Caddy crew’s bid for the podium result it narrowly missed out on at Sebring was undone by events after one hour, and with one hour to go. Westbrook had locked up entering the pits as he made his first stop when the Peugeot ahead of him appeared to be dawdling up to the pit speed-limit line. He wasn’t given new tyres, meaning that Westbrook had to carry a flat-spotted front-right. He managed to get far enough into the second hour to do away with the need for a splash at the end. That should have jumped the car ahead of the Porsche, all things being equal.

The late safety car changed the complexion of the final stages, although Lotterer did end up needing to make a splash after his 963 failed to take on a full dump of fuel as a result of a sensor issue when it stopped straight after the yellow-flag period. The delay wasn’t enough to bring the Caddy within striking range, however. “We got unlucky with the safety car because we would have avoided the splash,” said Lynn. “It came at a bad time for us. It was a good fight between us, the second Ferrari and the Porsche, but I think we had done enough by going off sequence early.”

Porsche felt that it made “a big step” after its abject run to fifth and sixth positions at Sebring, according to 963 programme manager Urs Kuratle. “The ship is taking speed now,” he said. “We’re more than happy with third place.” The second Porsche was neither as competitive as the third-place car, after Dane Cameron haemorrhaged time on the soft tyre, nor as reliable. The car co-driven by Michael Christensen and Frederic Makowiecki lost nearly an hour with a change of power-steering pump and its power unit on the way to last place overall.

Peugeot, Porsche and Cadillac all made gains in Portugal but acknowledge they need plenty more to catch Toyota

Photo by: Paul Foster

Portimao didn’t produce Peugeot’s best result in terms of points scored with fifth place for Loic Duval, Nico Muller and Gustavo Menezes; the 9X8 LMH scored a trio of fourths last year in a much smaller field. But it did for the first time get one of its cars to the finish without major technical issues. In fact, the only problem to afflict the car was the same sensor glitch that hit Toyota. Because the problem came late in the race, the car was able to continue in a default mode that meant it running with less power to stay within the torque curve laid down in the BoP.

There was a reliability glitch for the sister car, however, and worryingly it was a new one. A hydraulic leak discovered just before the green flag forced a change of power steering and, because the car shared by Paul di Resta, Jean-Eric Vergne and Mikkel Jensen had to join the race from the pits, it started a lap down as per the regulations. That was its deficit to the sister car six hours later when it crossed the line in seventh.

"This time we raced, not for first place – not yet – but we were racing for position. That was very good for the team" Olivier Jansonnie, Peugeot technical director 

“It was an important step for sure,” said Peugeot Sport technical director Olivier Jansonnie. “We put a lot of effort in the past days to secure some reliability and that worked. For sure we are moving forward and having two cars finish is a relief. This time we raced, not for first place – not yet – but we were racing for position. That was very good for the team.”

The battle of the LMH garagistes was won by Glickenhaus. Its Pipo-engined 007 ran reliably and quicker than the Vanwall-Gibson Vandervell 680, although it wasn’t remotely on the pace of the factory cars. The Vanwall went out late in the penultimate hour when a front brake disc exploded on Jacques Villeneuve and pitched him lightly into the Turn 10 barriers.

Glickenhaus and Vanwall clearly have a lot of work to do to get the most out of their machinery, but the same goes for Ferrari, Cadillac, Porsche and Peugeot as they try to get on terms with the runaway Toyotas. Each of the four factories made steps in Portugal, but there remains a chasm in front of them.

As the WEC heads to Spa, can any of Toyota's rivals catch the pace-setters?

Photo by: Paul Foster