Nakajima (Toyota): “Austin reminded me of Le Mans 2016”

A win in Texas could have effectively sealed the Endurance World Championship title, but Nyck de Vries was forced to retire the #7 Toyota TR010 Hybrid due to a mechanical failure just a few minutes before the end of the Six Hours of Lone Star Le Mans. “It almost felt like 2016 – like a tragedy,” admitted team principal Kazuki Nakajima during a press conference at the team’s headquarters in Cologne-Marsdorf. As we recall, three minutes before the end of the 24 Hours of Le Mans back then, the leading Toyota – with its first victory in the classic race almost within its grasp – retired. “After our bad luck in Austin, the World Championship is now wide open again. We would have liked things to have turned out differently,” said the 2019 WEC World Champion and three-time Le Mans winner.

Of course, Toyota’s repeat victory at Le Mans this year (along with third place) was a great source of satisfaction, “because we’ve been working towards this for three years.” With eight manufacturers this year and nine or ten next year (depending on the fate of Alpine-Signatech), the World Endurance Championship has “developed brilliantly. The way the lap times improved between 2012 and 2016 was truly remarkable. The change in regulations to the Hypercars was particularly important in terms of budgets. And despite the restrictions imposed by the BoP, we still have scope for developments in the powertrain. Racing has never been so intense, with such small differences in team performance. This forces engineers to deliver top-class work, meaning those who go on to work in production car development have been through a top-class training ground,” said the 41-year-old, reflecting on the WEC’s 14-year history.

And Nakajima admitted: “When the Hypercar era began, we had hoped for this level of support from manufacturers, but it wasn’t yet foreseeable. Now we have this situation with up to ten manufacturers. We’re delighted with the strong competition.”

With three races remaining, Toyota leads the standings with 140 points, just ahead of BMW (131) and Ferrari (114). In the drivers’ standings, the unlucky Texas trio of Conway, Kobayashi and de Vries are level on points with the BMW duo of Rast and Frijns at the top (75 each). What can we expect at Fuji at the end of September and then in the two Middle East replacement races in Barcelona and Monza? Nakajima explained: “Even though we know Fuji very well as our home circuit, we didn’t achieve the success we’d hoped for there in 2024 and 2025. So the race is a major challenge. Barcelona is likely to be difficult for everyone; hardly anyone has any experience there from endurance tests. We know nothing about tyre wear. At Monza, we have some experience, which we hope will help us to apply it to the new car as well.”

Nakajima did not wish to comment on the 2027 driver line-up just yet. “We are aware of the situation, but cannot officially confirm anything yet.” This could mean that Formula 1 partner Haas might, after all, opt for Toyota’s Ryo Hirakawa instead of Esteban Ocon, as some insiders claim.

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