Toyota Gazoo Racing dominated testing at Le Mans’ Circuit de la Sarthe over the weekend, beating fellow hybrid Le Mans class rival Porsche with the three quickest times two weekends ahead of the 24-hour race.
The Japanese team’s #7 TS050 Hybrid, driven by Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi and Stéphane Sarrazin, clocked the fastest time of 3min 18.132secs in its run of 94 laps, which beat the fastest Porsche 919 Hybrid, driven by Timo Bernhard, Earl Bamber and Brendon Hartley, by 3.38secs.
Briton Conway was encouraged by the pace, but warned that Porsche could return stronger for the race event, saying: “We began the test with quite a good car and the lap times were already strong early in the day, considering how the track felt. [But] the battle has only just started; there’s a lot of work to do”.
Toyota #8, driven by Sébastien Buemi, Anthony Davidson and Kazuki Nakajima, finished second fastest and just 1.158sec down on its sister car, while car #9 was 3.323sec behind the leader.
The 24 Hours of Le Mans takes place over the weekend of the 17-18 June. Toyota and Porsche are the sole remaining LMP1 hybrid cars in the race, following the departure of Audi. Toyota’s Davidson told Autocar earlier this year that the slimmed down class wouldn’t make winning any easier, “because Porsche has been the team to beat for two seasons”.
IndyCar: Detroit Grand Prix
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