Toyota
General
Toyota win WEC 6 hours of Sao Paulo, two Porsches complete the podium
- Ludo van Denderen
With a very dominant performance, the #8 Toyota with Sebastien Buemi, Brendon Hartley and Ryo Hirakawa taking turns behind the wheel took a convincing victory at the 6 Hours of Sao Paulo race. Behind this trio, the #6 Porsche and the #5 Porsche finished second and third in this World Endurance Championship race.
For the #7 Toyota with Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi and Nyck de Vries, nothing really seemed wrong in the opening phase: the team that started from pole had a reassuring lead over the #8 Toyota and even more so over the chasing Porsche. But a drive-through penalty for a foul during a full-course yellow and subsequent refuelling problems (resulting in a miserable pit stop) rendered this Toyota hopeless for victory.
Toyota much stronger than Porsche
With a great catch-up race - the #7 even fell all the way to eighteenth place - the team still managed to come back to P4. This was mainly thanks to a great last stint by Kobayashi. A podium finish was out of the question, but for Toyota there was still plenty of reason to cheer for. The bad luck of the #7 car meant happiness for the #8, which eventually drove to the win without a single threat. In fact, at the line, the difference to the first Porsche was almost 1.08.811 minutes. The second Porsche was more than seven seconds behind.
Jenson Button, in his JOTA, saw a fine final ranking go up in smoke in the closing stages. The former Formula 1 world champion was in fourth place for a long time, but in the absolute closing stages he received a stop & go penalty due to a technical infringement. In the end, Button was still able to finish seventh. Also noteworthy was the poorer performance by Ferrari, which had won the 24 hours at Le Mans. Mick Schumacher gave the #36 Alpine its first point of the season. The German finished tenth with his teammates.
Results Hypercars Sao Paulo
Results LMGT3 Sao Paulo
