Imola Post-Race Notebook

Photo: Andrea Lorenzina/DPPI

***Toyota’s victory in Sunday’s 6 Hours of Imola was not only notable for being the manufacturer’s 50th FIA World Endurance Championship win on its 100th series start, it also meant that all-time wins record holder Sebastien Buemi has now triumphed 27 times and in all five Toyota prototype models.

***Meanwhile, for co-driver Brendon Hartley it was a 24th victory that puts him one clear of Mike Conway in second place on the wins list and also means the New Zealander has now taken 12 triumphs for Toyota and 12 for previous employer Porsche.

***It was also the first win for the No. 8 Toyota crew since Bahrain 2024 and the first time it had succeeded in Italy.

***Toyota Racing technical director David Floury acknowledged that keeping Kamui Kobayashi out on old tires until the end of the race was considered but ultimately deemed “too risky.” The decision to change tires at the last stop put the car shared by Kobayashi, Nyck de Vries and Conway back to third place.

***Floury explained: “From the car [Kamui] was pushing for it, but it was not a safe option. If it’s the last race of the championship and it’s a matter of winning or losing the championship, you might consider it, but we looked at the bigger picture and we assessed the risk versus the benefit.”

***Ferrari head of track operations Giuliano Salvi expressed “bitter disappointment” about the Italian brand’s defeat on home soil but said Toyota made the right choice to “gamble” on its opening triple stint that ultimately proved key to its victory.

***Salvi told reporters post-race: “From the data we had, we thought it was not possible [to triple-stint]. If you are behind you can just do the opposite [of the leader] and be the hero, or be the idiot! It’s a pretty fine line. It was a certain kind of gamble, but it was a correct choice from the other side.”

***Salvi disputed Floury’s claim that Ferrari was the faster car overall at Imola, citing the newly-upgraded TR010’s superior tire and fuel management. “Overall Toyota is the leading car at the moment, there is no doubt,” he said. “We also saw it in free practice in our analysis. We thought from the start that Toyota would be a very difficult competitor.”

***When asked whether the No. 7 gaining track position in the fight for second late on influenced the final result, Salvi replied: “That one didn’t change anything. It would have been closer but they had the margin to keep us at bay, I am pretty sure.”

***Peugeot Sport team principal Emmanuel Esnault described the squad’s fall from fourth on the grid to 12th with the better of its 9X8s, the No. 94 of Malthe Jakobsen, Loic Duval and Theo Pourchaire, as “very disappointing.”

***Esnault said: “Unfortunately we were not able to optimize the pace and strategy in the race. At the first pit stop, I think we entered P6 and exited P10. I think because our competitors shortened the refueling time. So we lost some positions like this. It was difficult to get the level of pace we were expecting. Even if the balance was quite comfortable, we have some limiting factors that we have identified. We are still working on it.”

***Alpine driver Charles Milesi believes the fourth place he secured alongside Ferdinand Habsburg and Antonio Felix da Costa in the No. 35 Alpine A424 was the maximum they could have achieved. Milesi had qualified seventh but benefited from drive-through penalties for the No. 50 Ferrari 499P and No. 12 Cadillac V-Series.R to rise up the order.

***Milesi, who said the updated A424 was a “good step forward” but still struggled over the Imola curbs, told Sportscar365: “I think it was difficult to do better. Maybe in timing [of pit stops] we could’ve won 10 seconds through the race but the top three was quite ahead.”

***Milesi also felt the team made a strategic error to change all four tires during a virtual safety car: “We lost too much track position so I think it would’ve been better to do two [tires].”

***Head of BMW M Motorsport Andreas Roos praised the way in which the No. 20 BMW M Hybrid V8 of Rene Rast and Robin Frijns bounced back from falling to last, following a drive-through penalty in the second hour for speeding during a VSC, to finish fifth and in the thick of a five-car battle for fourth. “We always want to be on the podium,” said Roos.

***Roos added: “Today we were not in the fight for the podium. We also didn’t have a completely perfect race, especially with the No. 20, which we had a drive-through penalty where we were actually last at one stage. This put us on the back foot strategically because we had to make up positions. At the end to manage to be P5 with the car, and P7 with the other car, is a good result.”

***Phil Hanson was “frustrated” by the strategy AF Corse deployed on the satellite No. 83 Ferrari 499P that left team-mate Robert Kubica completing 105 laps on Medium tires, and ultimately led to the yellow machine finishing tenth. “We’re not always going to make the right decisions, it’s about making sure we have the right procedures in place to make better decisions in the future,” he said.

***The Briton added that he felt Ferrari was the fastest car but the 499P had no match for the way Toyota was able to get its tires to last. “What they’re incredibly strong at is the consistency – the way they are able to triple stint the tires and still be strong,” said Hanson. “We couldn’t do that this weekend with how we were running the cars. That’s not to say we weren’t quick. We were super fast and the Ferrari was probably the fastest car but I think, if Toyota keep it consistent across three stints, they’re going to be very tough to beat.”

***Aston Martin Valkyrie pilot Harry Tincknell was pleased with the progress the British manufacturer had made since it visited Imola early in the car’s first season last year, despite the curbs meaning it remained a “terrible track” for the Heart of Racing squad. “Light years from this time last year and, as soon as we go to some other tracks, hopefully we can have some more fun,” said Tincknell, who finished ninth.

***Nicky Catsburg said the No. 33 TF Sport Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R “should’ve won today” after finishing just 0.265 seconds behind the No. 69 WRT BMW M4 GT3 EVO in the LMGT3 victory battle. “Of course, we got lucky with the No. 10 [Garage 59 McLaren 720S GT3 Evo] having issues but that was after we got very unlucky in the last two pitstops – we had to do a pushback, we had to re-raise the car and we lost a massive amount of time,” Catsburg, who was returning to the WEC after two seasons away, told Sportscar365.

***Of the close fight with Dan Harper in the BMW in the final minutes, Catsburg added: “I felt like he started celebrating one lap early. I started pushing extra hard and flashing him and flashing him. It was so much fun to come back like this in WEC.”

***One of the other LMGT3 cars in contention in the early stages was the No. 88 Proton Competition Ford Mustang GT3 EVO, which had started down in ninth before Stefano Gattuso guided it into the lead battle in the second stint. Although it ultimately finished eighth with a tough final stint for ex-Formula 1 driver Logan Sargeant, Gattuso was encouraged by the display.

***He said: “I’m now feeling very confident for the rest of the year. For the final stint, Logan didn’t have any air conditioning, which is very difficult for driving – inside of the car can get very hot with the engine in front of us. He did a great job considering tough circumstances.”

***Also in the LMGT3 lead fight early on were the pair of Akkodis ASP Lexus RC F GT3s, but there was double trouble for the team at the end of the first hour. The No. 78 car had a starter issue during its first pitstop and required extensive work to get going again, while the sister No. 87 machine came to a halt on track moments later.

***Esteban Masson returned the No. 78 to the track later in the race, finishing 23 laps down, and said: “The team did a phenomenal job to fix the car really quickly, as quick as they could. At the end, it’s motorsport – sometimes it’s like this and you can’t control everything. We couldn’t start the car after the first pitstop, the starter didn’t work. We need to get a bit more detail to know exactly what happened.”

***Another car in strife later in the race was the No. 61 Iron Lynx Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo that had run solidly in the middle of the LMGT3 pack. “We felt we had a technical issue related to power and we kept losing power,” explained Maxime Martin. “It was getting worse and worse so we preferred to retire the car because we started to have other problems.”

***Although Martin did not feel the Mercedes-AMG could fight at the front, he was still expecting a decent result without the problems. “I think we would’ve been in the mid-pack but we didn’t have the speed to be at the front or win, but without issues we could’ve had good points,” he added. “We were with the Porsches and they finished P3 and P4 so I think we would’ve been more or less there.”

***An official figure of 92,175 spectators attended Imola for the delayed opening round of the WEC season. As expected, this smashed the previous circuit record of 73,600, which was set in 2024. The next race is due to take place at Spa-Francorchamps on May 9.

Jamie Klein contributed to this report

Source: Sports Car 365