Rain-affected start to the season for Toyota Racing in Silverstone

Toyota Racing got its FIA World Endurance Championship season under way in wet and regularly-changing conditions today with a pair of practice sessions for the Six Hours of Silverstone.

Alexander Wurz, Nicolas Lapierre, Toyota Racing, Toyota TS030, Hybrid

Photo by: XPB Images

Rain before and during the first session gave the two crews a chance to try out Michelin’s wet and intermediate tyres. An incident-free session saw the two TS030 HYBRIDs finish third (#7) and fourth (#8).

For the drivers of the #8 car, today represented their first competitive sessions for TOYOTA Racing since last year’s Le Mans 24 Hours, although all three have completed an extensive pre-season testing programme.

The rain returned for second practice, although a short dry spell provided a very brief window for slick tyre evaluation. With such limited dry running, the final result of third (#7) and sixth (#8) does not reflect the expected picture for the rest of the weekend.

Tomorrow sees a final one-hour practice (09.00-10.00) before qualifying in the afternoon (12.40-13.00) with the starting position for each car determined by the aggregate of two drivers’ two fastest laps. The race begins at 12.00 on Sunday.

Alex Wurz: “The changeable conditions were not ideal but it’s the same for everyone. Still, it was an interesting day and we were able to go through some tests. Now we have to wait and see, particularly in terms of the weather; the forecast is a little bit better for the remainder of the weekend. The main focus now will be on the few laps we could complete in the dry. We will analyse the data we gained and try to optimise the package.”

Nicolas Lapierre: “It was an interesting session. We had some lap time on the dry tyre which was important for us. We’ve tested the different tyres - wet, inter and dry - now we have to take a good look on the data so we make the right choices. We tried various set-ups and it will be important to make a good debrief to extract the best from our car. Hopefully, tomorrow should be dry so we will see how it goes.”

Anthony Davidson: “The mixed conditions today made it difficult to get the best balance on the car. In the second session I drove just one lap on the intermediate tyre and realised straight away that the track had dried and was ready for slicks. So we could do a tyre comparison on the slicks, which is good as it gives us some knowledge of these tyres. The weather was kind enough for that but we want to extract a bit more speed from the car. We’ll be working on that into tomorrow.”

Stéphane Sarrazin: “It’s nice to be back in a competitive session with TOYOTA Racing. It’s a pity the weather wasn’t really kind, but that’s the same for all teams. The tyres were behaving very well in the wet and it felt like we have a very good car. Also with the intermediate tyres we had a nice balance and we could push quite hard, so the lap times were looking strong. We will study the set-up now and make the most of our car for the rest of the weekend.”

Sébastien Buemi: “It was quite a good day because all the three drivers could get running. It’s nice to be back on a race circuit, part of the #8 line-up and fighting with the other guys. It was difficult due to the changing conditions on track and we had to adapt to these conditions. In the end, it’s not ideal to set-up the cars when it dries and rains again but it should be dry for the rest of the weekend so we are quite confident to get a good set-up.”

TOYOTA Racing