How Toyota’s sole survivor turned the tables at Spa

After a chastening opening to the season at Sebring that ended in an enormous accident, Toyota's #7 crew got their World Endurance Championship underway with victory at a treacherously slippery Spa to make up for its sister car's Sebring defeat to Alpine, as Glickenhaus's promising qualifying turned to disaster in the race

Gary Watkins May 9, 2022, 4:01 PM

To lose one victory in the World Endurance Championship when you are the only major manufacturer in class might be regarded as misfortune. To lose two in a row would probably be deemed careless. Toyota avoided that fate at Spa last weekend despite a first mechanical retirement for one of its prototypes since 2017 and everything the Ardennes weather gods could throw at the field.

Toyota led the majority of the way through a race interrupted by three red flags, six safety cars and five Full Course Yellows and wasn’t headed in the Hypercar class beyond early in the second hour on a day that neither Alpine nor Glickenhaus put together a consistent challenge. But to suggest that race winners Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi and Jose Maria Lopez somehow had it easy aboard the winning Toyota GR010 HYBRID would be both unfair and downright disrespectful.

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Author Gary Watkins

Gary Watkins has, for reasons best known to himself, devoted all his working life to covering sportscar racing. This season is his 32nd as a motorsport journalist, during which time he has reported on major long-distance events on four continents and approaching 75 24-hour races. He reckons a degree in political philosophy makes him well qualified for covering the sometimes Machiavellian world of international sportscars.

Gary, who also writes for Autoweek, Motor Sport, Autocourse, RACER and others, lives in Surbiton but spends more time on the road than at home for most of the year.