Davidson confident of stronger Toyota race showing

The Japanese manufacturer is showing great faith in its third and final aero kit for 2016, which takes it through the remaining six races on the WEC calendar.

However, the Nurburgring may not be the right place for it to enjoy the fruits of its labour as the Cologne-based outfit is still lagging in the downforce stakes compared to Audi and Porsche.

"You always want more downforce and we’re still lacking a bit to the competition,” Davidson told Motorsport.com after qualifying at the German track, where the lead Toyota was 1.2 seconds off the pole-winning #7 Audi.

"That gap was probably slightly unfair because they ran another set of tyres. We were running our race tyre and had to use the same set. I think the 1.2 seconds we are away on average isn’t as big as that in reality."

With a relative lack of downforce, the team will have to put its other strengths to good use if it is to threaten Audi and Porsche during the six-hour race.

"I feel we’ve got a car that’s pretty kind on the tyres, like we saw in Spa,” Davidson said.

“It’s only really in qualifying where we can’t turn our engine up any more like I guess the others can. It’s always like that. We feel disheartened after qualifying and when it comes to the race we’re pretty much right there, apart from Silverstone.

"I followed the Porsche around on a longer run in practice and we seemed to be somewhere in the same ball park."

Davidson expects the brakes will be a critical factor in the race: “Cooling the brakes is one of the biggest concerns. Here and Bahrain are probably the two [most demanding] circuits, as we saw with Porsche’s brake failure [in practice]."

"We’re not in energy recovery deficit, we’re actually in saturation around this track because there’s just so much braking. That means you put more pressure on the actual brakes of the car than on the electric motors and that means you have to run as much cooling as you can.

"So brakes will be a concern in the race for everybody. It’s normally an area we’re quite good at."

Sarrazin: "We can still fight for the championship"

The #5 car with Davidson, Sebastien Buemi and Kazuki Nakajima is out of title contention with just a single point on its tally after its last-lap Le Mans heartbreak.

However, the #6 crew of Stephane Sarrazin, Mike Conway and Kamui Kobayashi, is still harbouring hopes for a title challenge even if they are 40 points adrift of the Le Mans-winning #2 Porsche.

"Qualifying wasn’t what we wanted, but we knew we were behind Porsche and Audi over one lap,” Sarrazin admitted. “Our new package is working very well for the race.

"This low-speed, high -downforce track is maybe one of the most difficult for us, but we are not far. We can make [the difference] on strategy and tyre management, similar to Spa. It will be difficult but we will be on our game."

The Frenchman added: "We take it race by race. We need to grab some points off Porsche. The #8 Audi is one point in front.

"We do our best, we can still fight for the championship. We have six races, everything can happen."