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Davidson: Toyota’s Le Mans aero won’t work anywhere else

Toyota’s Anthony Davidson has explained why the Japanese manufacturer didn’t deploy its Le Mans aerodynamic package at Spa’s WEC round, unlike LMP1 rivals Audi and Porsche.

#5 Toyota Racing Toyota TS050 Hybrid: Anthony Davidson, Sébastien Buemi, Kazuki Nakajima

#5 Toyota Racing Toyota TS050 Hybrid: Anthony Davidson, Sébastien Buemi, Kazuki Nakajima

Toyota Racing

#5 Toyota Racing Toyota TS050 Hybrid: Anthony Davidson, Sébastien Buemi, Kazuki Nakajima
Anthony Davidson, Toyota Racing
#5 Toyota Racing Toyota TS050 Hybrid: Anthony Davidson, Sébastien Buemi, Kazuki Nakajima
#5 Toyota Racing Toyota TS050 Hybrid: Anthony Davidson, Sébastien Buemi, Kazuki Nakajima
#5 Toyota Racing Toyota TS050 Hybrid: Anthony Davidson, Sébastien Buemi, Kazuki Nakajima
#1 Porsche Team Porsche 919 Hybrid: Timo Bernhard, Mark Webber, Brendon Hartley
#7 Audi Sport Team Joest Audi R18: Marcel Fässler, Andre Lotterer, Benoit Tréluyer
#5 Toyota Racing Toyota TS050 Hybrid: Anthony Davidson, Sébastien Buemi, Kazuki Nakajima
#5 Toyota Racing Toyota TS050 Hybrid: Anthony Davidson, Sébastien Buemi, Kazuki Nakajima
#5 Toyota Racing Toyota TS050 Hybrid: Anthony Davidson, Sébastien Buemi, Kazuki Nakajima
#5 Toyota Racing Toyota TS050 Hybrid: Anthony Davidson, Sébastien Buemi, Kazuki Nakajima

Toyota is running at Spa this weekend, for the second round of the FIA World Endurance Championship, with a trimmed-out version of its regular ‘sprint’ aero package.

Teams are allowed three distinct packages, and can pick and choose when to use them.

“Our Le Mans package is very unique to that circuit,” explained Davidson. “It’s specifically tuned to that track, with very little scope to go up or down [on downforce level].

“It’s different approaches from different teams. [Porsche] are clearly running their Le Mans downforce at a high rate, and we’re running our sprint package at a low rate – so there must be a crossover at some point.

“We’ve got a bit more drag and downforce than them at this track. There’s no right or wrong at Spa: it’s a compromise circuit.”

When asked why Toyota didn’t consider its Le Mans setup here, he replied: “If we ran our Le Mans package here, we’d have been scooting off the track everywhere – we can’t go high enough with our downforce [with that setup] around here. But we can low enough with our sprint package to be reasonably quick in a straight line.

“We are completely in the right window.”

“No excuses” in qualifying

Davidson has admitted his shock to be so far behind the Porsche pace, and will start fifth on the grid with teammates Sebastian Buemi and Kazuki Nakajima.

“It was a bit of a surprise to be 1.9 seconds away from the Porsche,” he said. “We hoped to be closer than that.

“It’s slightly disappointing but the car felt good. No excuses, Porsche was just genuinely quicker today. We had no answer for it.

“I genuinely believe that we’re gonna be closer to Porsche in the race than qualifying, but whether that’s close enough to even mildly threaten them… I don’t know. It will be tough, in terms of traffic management and [tyre] marbles. You’ve gotta keep your nose clean, we learned that from Silverstone.”

Davidson hoped that the higher downforce level run by Toyota might pay dividends over the long stints in Saturday’s race.

“If you’re going to get away with running lower downforce, qualifying is the time to do it,” he said. “How it works the tyres in the race, normally you’d say higher downforce saves tyres better. Our race pace should be closer to them than qually.

“Last year we had more deg on our car, and this year it’s less of a concern. I’d say the hotter conditions suit us more than cooler conditions.”

Interview by Filip Cleeren

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Edition

Australia