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- Jan 29, 2024
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Toyota Racing will commence the 90th 24 Hours of Le Mans race on Saturday with its no. 8 Toyota TS030 Hybrid at the hands of Anthony Davidson, Sébastien Buemi and Stéphane Sarrazin starting in fourth position, while drivers Alex Wurz, Nicolas Lapierre and Kazuki Nakajima in car no. 7 will take position just behind their team-mates.
Sarrazin posted a brilliant lap of 3mins 26.654seconds in the dying minutes of qualifying at midnight on Wednesday to secure a fourth place on the grid behind the three Audi R18 etrons. The other Toyota wasn’t too far behind either as Nakajima circled the circuit in 3mins 26.676second to ensure that both the Toyotas were close on the tails of the reigning champions.
After securing fourth place on the grid Sarrazin said, “We are fourth on the grid and even after the issue yesterday the car felt really good, so it has been a satisfying day. It was fun to finally have some dry track time at the end and it’s nice to improve our grid position. But the priority has always been the race and we have a really good race balance. All of us feel comfortable with the car and the set-up we have defined for the race. It’s a long race and we’ll give everything we have.”
The qualifying positions for Le Mans is decided by every car’s single fastest lap from six hours of qualifying time, that is divided into three sessions. Rainfall prior to the day’s first session meant that Wurz and Davidson had to limit the day’s running.
Track conditions did improve, but not for long, as another cloud burst altered conditions enough forcing the team to switch from slick tyres. To make matters even more complicated, the qualifying session was red flagged for barrier repair with half an hour remaining for the session to end.
Owing to the changing weather conditions and the red flag, the final session was extended by 30 minutes to two-and-a-half hours. Fortunately, the rain stayed away this time round allowing Sarrazin and Nakajima to improve their times and secure fourth and fifth respectively. Nicolas and Sébastien both took a short final stint but couldn’t quite better the qualifying times already set due to an extremely busy track.
After the final qualifying Nakajima commented, “Today we continued working for the race. We were evaluating the tyres, putting mileage on them to judge the durability. The conditions were difficult for me because they were changing all the time. It was not pure dry conditions but it improved and we have some good data to prepare for the race. We made some changes from Wednesday and I can feel the difference. There is still room for small improvements but we are pretty much there. Now I look forward to an interesting race.”
Although the Toyotas are once again behind the Audis on the grid this year, the probability of a crash at the legendary La Sarthe circuit makes the outcome absolutely impossible to predict. Let’s also not forget that Toyota was leading the race last year, but their campaign ended after both cars suffered a crash. This time round with a new and improved race car, Toyota will be praying for lady luck to work in their favour, so that they can give the reigning champions from Ingolstadt some tough competition this year all the way to the chequered flag.
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