Le Mans 24 Hours: Test Day - TOYOTA RACING making Le Mans progress

A productive yet challenging day included set-up and tyre analysis. A morning incident for the #8 TR010 HYBRID of Sébastien Buemi, Brendon Hartley and Ryō Hirakawa necessitated extensive repairs. Nevertheless, they finished the day second fastest, while Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi and Nyck de Vries were eighth in their #7 TR010 HYBRID.

The high-speed 13.626km Circuit de la Sarthe, which includes sections on public roads, is a unique challenge for engineers and drivers. The team worked intensively during six hours of testing to adjust set-ups for the demanding combination of long flat-out sections, heavy braking and high-speed corners.

Test day began with a three-hour first practice, held in dry conditions and with air temperatures of 16-19°C. The session ended early for the #8 TR010 HYBRID when it was hit by a spinning LMP2 car at turn three with 25 minutes left. The resulting damage to the left and rear bodywork forced Ryō to stop at the side of the track.

Mechanics worked quickly to repair the #8 in the two-and-a-half hours between sessions so it could take to the track at the start of second practice. This three-hour session was completed without incident, in slightly warmer temperatures.

In addition to the race drivers, Esteban Masson completed four laps in the #7 TR010 HYBRID in the morning session. The 21-year-old Frenchman is part of TOYOTA’s driver development activities and earned valuable experience behind the wheel of a Hypercar on the Circuit de la Sarthe.

Action resumes on Wednesday with free practice and qualifying. Pole position and the leading grid places are determined by two Hyperpole sessions on Thursday evening, either side of further free practice sessions. The race begins at 4pm local time on Saturday 13 June.  

Quotes:

Kamui Kobayashi (Team Principal and driver, car #7): “The test went pretty well overall and I’m happy to be back here at Le Mans. We have learned a lot about our TR010 HYBRID today. We still have some things to improve, and I think we know what we need to do. We are pretty much where we expected to be in terms of set-up. Now we need to consider if the track conditions will come to us, and we want to generally find more performance. The whole team has worked hard to get to this point and we feel well prepared. Next week we will go for it.”

Ryō Hirakawa (Driver, car #8): “It was a solid day and nice to be back at Le Mans with the TR010 HYBRID, which felt really good today. The main target was to assess the tyres, and we tried all three compounds. We learned a lot about the tyres, the car systems, and the set-ups. It looks positive and we seem to have made a step compared to last year. The accident in the morning was really unfortunate. I couldn’t do anything about it, but it’s better to get the bad luck out of the way before the race. The mechanics did a great job and allowed us to go through our full programme, so hats off to them.”

Shinnosuke Sato (Powertrain principal engineer): “Although we have quite a lot of experience of this track, we modified our car for this season. Today was a very important opportunity to validate these changes, especially on the long straights. We are at high speed for longer than on other tracks, so the usage of the powertrain is unique at Le Mans, and the power distribution is important. Generally speaking, it was a good day, and we looked at a lot of test items. Fortunately, the powertrain components were okay after the collision for #8 so we lost a little track time, but nothing more serious.”

Bastian Kernstock (Race engineer, car #7): “It was a busy day with a lot of items to test, but it went well. This track evolves constantly because you have some resurfacing, and it’s also partly on public roads therefore the surface is always different from year to year. We need to understand all the specificities of this track and that's why today was particularly important. On top, we also have new tyres this season and this was our first chance to run these in Le Mans. So, our first priority was to understand the tyres, then focusing on set-up work, to find a compromise which delivers high performance and provides good drivability for the race.”

Ryan Dingle (Race engineer, car #8): “Today was a good day and we went through about 90% of the test items that we wanted to. We could evaluate what has changed on the circuit and, of course, the new tyres. We have more compounds to choose from here compared to other WEC races, which brings new opportunities, and new challenges. We had an unfortunate incident that ended our morning session a bit early. Luckily, we had done what we wanted in that session, which was to get all three drivers up to speed here. Thank you to the mechanics and other team members for getting the car back out in time for the afternoon, which was a packed one focusing on plenty of test items.”

Click here to access the 2026 TOYOTA RACING WEC press kit. 

Click here to download rights-free video material of the TR010 HYBRID.

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