The Toyota Gazoo Racing factory team won the World Endurance Championship for the fifth time, doing so ahead of schedule, in the penultimate stage of the season, held at the Japanese circuit at Fuji Speedway.
Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi and Jose Maria Lopez, racing the #7 Toyota GR10 Hybrid sports prototype, became the winners of the 6 Hours of Fuji, and their partners, the #8 crew of Sebastien Buemi, Brendon Hartley and Rio Hirakawa, took 2nd place e place.
Nearly 55,000 Japanese fans gathered in the stands of the Autodrome to witness Toyota’s victorious double.
For the No. 7 crew this is already the fourth victory this season, while the second Toyota trio has achieved only one such achievement, but in the individual competition it is the drivers in the No. 8 car who are leading the way.
The final part of today’s race was entrusted to Kamui Kobayashi, and he crossed the finish line first after 229 laps of racing.
Kamui Kobayashi, team principal: “The winning double was our goal, which was not so easy to achieve, but we showed excellent pace. Thanks to the team for their hard work, thanks to Toyota and our partners!
It’s great to see so many Toyota Gazoo Racing flags on the track – I really appreciate the support from the fans. The race was difficult, especially after we lost several positions at the start. On this circuit it is very difficult to overtake rival hypercars, but it was also difficult to overtake cars from other classes, but we did it, we did what we had to do, and the team helped us a lot.
We are happy to have won the championship at our home stadium. We had to overcome many challenges during the season, but we have a fast car and a strong team, we made no mistakes and the drivers did a great job.
Our first goal was to win the team event, and now we will celebrate this achievement. The next goal is the championship title and although we are still a bit behind in terms of points, we will try to do everything we can in Bahrain.”
Together with the Toyota Gazoo Racing drivers, Koiji Sato, president of Toyota Corporation, who also heads the motorsport division of Toyota Gazoo Racing Europe, climbed to the podium.
The WEC season finale will take place on November 4 during the Bahrain 8 Hours.
Source: F1 News
I am Christopher Clyde, an experienced journalist and content writer with a passion for sports. I have been writing about Formula 1 news for the past five years and am currently employed as an author at athletistic.com, one of the top sports websites in the US.
