Cologne, Germany,
30
April
2021
|
23:33
Europe/Amsterdam

Historic Hypercar pole for TOYOTA GAZOO Racing

Summary

TOYOTA GAZOO Racing earned a historic first-ever Hypercar pole position as the FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC) began its new era with the new GR010 HYBRID locking out the front row in qualifying for the Total 6 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps.

The #7 Hypercar of World Champions Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi and José María López will lead the field away for the first race of the season, in Belgium, after a very impressive lap of 2mins 0.747secs from Kamui. Kazuki completed a perfect session for the team by taking second place, 0.519secs behind, in the #8 car he shares with Sébastien Buemi and Brendon Hartley.

In the first qualifying session under WEC’s new format, which sees one driver per car take part, Kamui also earned a bonus World Championship point for the team and the #7 GR010 HYBRID drivers as TOYOTA GAZOO Racing prepares to challenge for a fifth consecutive victory at Spa.

Almost 15 hours of testing and free practice sessions took place earlier in the week and TOYOTA GAZOO Racing worked tirelessly to fine-tune set-ups and control settings on the GR010 HYBRID, despite losing valuable time with technical issues on the #7.

After close lap times in practice, a highly-anticipated qualifying saw Kamui and Kazuki put the revised set-ups to good use with clean laps at the very start of the session on new Michelin tyres and low fuel, setting lap times which none of their Hypercar or LMP2 rivals could match.

The 6 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps, the first of six in a revised 2021 WEC calendar, begins at 1.30PM CEST on Saturday.

 

Kamui Kobayashi (GR010 HYBRID #7):

“I am very proud to take the first Hypercar pole. It’s not been an easy road to get here, we have had some problems this week, so it was not the perfect week up to now. But in qualifying we put everything together and the car was really good. I was really happy with my first lap on proper low fuel here so I want to say thank you to the TOYOTA GAZOO Racing team, they have done a really great job with this car. It is a very difficult challenge to build a brand new car to the Hypercar rules and I think to achieve that lap time is pretty good so I am pleased to be a part of the story of this car. I think tomorrow is going to be more challenging, particularly with tyre degradation so there are still a lot of things to overcome. First of all we need to achieve reliability and we need to finish the race cleanly, that is the priority.”

Kazuki Nakajima (GR010 HYBRID #8):

“I have to say my lap wasn’t very clean. The car was quite good and I was happy with the handling on the new tyres so it was an enjoyable lap, but I could have done a little better. Compared to the beginning of the Prologue we are happier with the car and also the track conditions. We have a better feeling, but still I think the race will be quite difficult, especially double-stinting the tyres. Hopefully we can make the right decisions and fight for victory; that’s our target. Depending on the sessions through the weekend, sometimes we’ve had better pace on the long run and sometimes it has been car #7, so it’s difficult to predict, but of course we want to race hard and fight with the other GR010 HYBRID for the win.”

 

Qualifying results:

1st

#7 TOYOTA GAZOO Racing

2min 0.747secs

 

2nd

#8 TOYOTA GAZOO Racing

+0.519secs

 

3rd

#22 United Autosports (Hanson/Scherer/Albuquerque)

+1.657secs

 

4th

#36 Alpine (Negrao/Lapierre/Vaxivierre)

+1.905secs

 

5th

#26 G-Drive (Rusinov/Colapinto/De Vries)

+2.237secs

 

6th

#29 Racing Team Nederland (v. Eerd/v.d Garde/v. Uitert)

+2.688secs

 
    

Free Practice 3 results:

1st

#7 TOYOTA GAZOO Racing

2min 2.518secs

27 laps

2nd

#8 TOYOTA GAZOO Racing

+0.305secs

26 laps

3rd

#22 United Autosports (Hanson/Scherer/Albuquerque)

+1.243secs

24 laps

4th

#25 G-Drive (Falb/Andrade/Merhi)

+1.413secs

25 laps

5th

#26 G-Drive (Rusinov/Colapinto/De Vries)

+1.525secs

26 laps

6th

#36 Alpine (Negrao/Lapierre/Vaxivierre)

+1.592secs

26 laps

    

Free Practice 2 results:

1st

#36 Alpine (Negrao/Lapierre/Vaxivierre)

2min 3.396secs

33 laps

2nd

#8 TOYOTA GAZOO Racing

+0.035secs

38 laps

3rd

#22 United Autosports (Hanson/Scherer/Albuquerque)

+0.337secs

35 laps

4th

#26 G-Drive (Rusinov/Colapinto/De Vries)

+0.583secs

35 laps

5th

#34 Inter Europol (Smiechowski/v.d.Zande/Brundle)

+0.834secs

38 laps

6th

#25 G-Drive (Falb/Andrade/Merhi)

+1.314secs

37 laps

7th

#7 TOYOTA GAZOO Racing

+1.321secs

39 laps

 

Press release

URL: https://toyotagazooracing.com/release/2021/

 

The TOYOTA GAZOO Racing 2021 WEC media kit and Pictures uploaded here during the event

URL: https://www.tgr-dam.com