Toyota “Knew it Would be a Tough Weekend” at Spa
Photo: Fabrizio Boldoni/DPPI
Toyota Racing technical director David Floury says it was “disappointing” and is “raising some concerns” that the manufacturer was unable to progress to the Hyperpole shootout for the 6 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps FIA World Endurance Championship round.
Three weeks after Toyota was within a whisker of taking pole for the Imola season-opener and then executed a perfected strategy to win the race, the two TR010 Hybrids struggled far more at Spa and languished down in 12th and 16th places after qualifying.
Floury “knew it would be a tough weekend” heading into Spa but dismissed any notion that Toyota was sandbagging in Belgium by pointing out that it went faster in qualifying this year than in 2025.
“It’s generally not our best track here since some years,” said Floury. “We continue this trend.
“There are different ways to look at quali and Hyperpole today. It is obviously disappointing and it is also raising some concerns but, on the other hand, I can already imagine there will be thoughts we are sandbagging, but in actual fact if you look at quali compared to Hyperpole last year we are one of the only two manufacturers who were here last year to improve our lap times.
“We improved our lap time by three tenths and the average [across the field] was slower by three tenths.
“Relative to the field we are six tenths faster so I think it shows we are not sandbagging and it also raises some concern looking ahead not knowing what to expect.”
Floury believes the upgraded TR010 Hybrid for this year has enabled Toyota to narrow that gap but said he thought the No. 7 entry of Kamui Kobayashi that missed out on making Hyperpole by 0.029 seconds could have only improved his time by a maximum of a tenth even with a perfect lap.
He also explained that Toyota adopted different setups across its two cars to try to negate its lack of performance.
“There were a few different philosophies and approach to car setup,” Floury said, when asked by Sportscar365 about the differences.
“Obviously when you’re in the position we’re in, you have to try. When you try, sometimes it works, sometimes it’s not as conclusive so tonight we have to analyze everything and try to learn as much as we can from the two cars and converge to bring the best package tomorrow.”
Toyota nailed its strategy calls at Imola and Floury acknowledged that doing the same at Spa would be “the only way we can score good points.”
It did fight back from similarly lowly grid positions of 15th and 16th at Spa last year to ultimately finish fourth and seventh.
Kobayashi said that Toyota was particularly struggling in sector two and told Sportscar365: “We will do our best to recover as much as we can but that’s not so easy because sector two compared to Alpine for example, in only sector two, we lost one second.”
Brendon Hartley, meanwhile, admitted to making a couple of mistakes on his lap that left him down in 16th in the No. 8 machine in the first part of qualifying.
“I think Kamui’s put a pretty good lap together and he’s P12 so it shows we didn’t have the pace,” Hartley told Sportscar365.
“We tried a few things on our car and didn’t get everything together, and I also didn’t get a perfect lap together.”
Giovinazzi laments “no feeling with the car” as Ferrari struggles
Toyota was not the only Imola frontrunner to struggle in Spa qualifying as only one of the three Ferrari 499Ps made Hyperpole, the No. 50 machine of Antonio Fuoco ultimately starting Saturday’s race eighth.
Antonio Giovinazzi put the No. 51 machine on pole at Imola but was looking ragged at Spa and could only manage 15th on the grid.
“I didn’t feel at all comfy with the car, the pace wasn’t there,” said Giovinazzi who added that Ferrari encountered “a lot of issues” on the No. 51 car during practice that further put it on the back foot.
“Hopefully we can find a better setup for tomorrow’s race — it will be difficult because in a straight line we’re really slow but let’s see what we can do.”
Giovinazzi clocked a 2:01.848, which compared to the 2:01.117 that Fuoco managed in Hyperpole, and Giovinazzi said there was no way he could match his team-mate’s performance.
“I had no feeling with the car so no way I could do the lap time of him,” Giovinazzi said.
Fuoco told Sportscar365 that a lack of straight-line speed was Ferrari’s biggest problem, adding: “I think on our side we did the best, I was really happy with the lap but it was not enough.
“It’s quite frustrating when you do a really good job, the team put all the effort in this weekend and then we were losing a lot of lap time in sector one and sector three.
“It’s not in our hands but we need to focus on ourselves and try to do the best tomorrow in the race.”
Source: Sports Car 365