General
Toyota drivers surprised at WEC press conference: 'Are we champions?'
- Ludo van Denderen
Ferrari came close, Porsche is always an outsider and the relatively new WEC teams Peugeot and Cadillac are ambitious. Yet on Sunday in Fuji, Toyota Gazoo Racing took the world title among constructors in the World Endurance Championship for the fifth time in a row. Although this was not immediately obvious to everyone.
Mike Conway was still not sure during the press conference. "It looks like we won constructors?", asked the Briton, who then got confirmation from the questioner. The fourth win of the season by the trio of Conway, José María López and Kamui Kobayashi, combined with the second place of the second Toyota (with Brendon Hartley, Sébastien Buemi and Ryo Hirakawa) was indeed enough for the title.
'Toyota made fewer mistakes'
Former Formula 1 driver Kobayashi, in addition to being one of the drivers at Toyota also the team boss, was two seats away. "About the championship, my team, engineer didn't tell me during in-lap, so I just realised there," the Japanese said, pointing to the door of the press room. "So a bit surprised to be honest they should have told me earlier but yeah that's how it is."
For the ninth time in a decade, Toyota was the best at its home race in Fuji, with more than 50,000 fans cheering for them in the stands. "We see the WEC become more populair in Japan and hopefully going to get more people looking at our championship, I think that's what I'm looking for however, I think through the season this championship team title, its brilliant, it was really tough. I think the job by the driver and mechanics, no mistakes, was really a huge difference to other manufactures," Kobayashi said.
Team WRT heading for title in LMP2
In the hypercars, one title is thus conceded, in the LMP2 class everything is still open. Team WRT, with Rui Andrade, Louis Delétraz and Robert Kubica, did move one step closer to the title through its victory in Japan. The latter driver commented, "Of course, this put us in a very good place for the championship. Inter Europol was close to us but didn't score a lot of points, united 22 finished behind us."
"Of course, we would prefer to have the sister car in P2 but they lost position on the last lap. anyway, this brings us in good shape, good points before [the last race in] Bahrain and we have to execute another clean weekend in Bahrain and bring it home hopefully," Kubica said.
Luck at last for Frijns
Robin Frijns finished third in Fuji with that second Team WRT car. For the Dutchman, it was only his first podium in 2023; in Formula E and the WEC, he previously failed to succeed. "A difficult race, I think, but it’s nice to get our first point. It was a bit unfortunate in the final duel, it would have been nice to score a one-two, but one-three is also good. We had some tyre issues in the first two stints but we came back, and it wasn’t a bad day," Frijns said.