Sébastien Buemi has admitted Toyota’s third triumph of the season in last weekend’s 6 Hours of Fuji was ‘completely unexpected’, after a bold late roll of the dice catapulted the #8 crew to home soil success – in a race in which the manufacturer had not even looked like reaching the rostrum.
For the most decorated driver in FIA World Endurance Championship history to describe a win as ‘one of our best in a long time’ hints at the magnitude of the achievement – and to pull it off in front of a 72,326-strong crowd, Toyota had to overcome pressure at every turn. Pressure from not having prevailed at the circuit it owns since 2023; pressure from the fact that each of the TR010 Hybrid’s predecessors had won first time out at the track; and pressure quite literally at every turn for Ryō Hirakawa in the closing stages, having to fend off a flying Victor Martins on significantly fresher tyres.
But first, back to the start. The #8 Toyota shared by Hirakawa, Buemi and Brendon Hartley began the six-hour bout from eighth position in the headlining Hypercar category. The Swiss star made some early progress to advance to sixth, with the New Zealander maintaining that positive momentum to climb to fourth, but the podium still seemed a long way off, especially when Hartley was spun round by Aston Martin’s Harry Tincknell into Turn One shortly into the fifth hour.
The late-race safety car prompted by the collision between LMGT3 protagonists Mattia Drudi and Finn Gehrsitz, however, offered Toyota an opportunity – and the championship’s most successful marque grabbed it with both hands.
As the entire field peeled into the pits, a decision to short-fuel the #8 entry and not change any of its tyres vaulted home hero Hirakawa from sixth into the lead, and with the barrier repairs taking some time to complete, when the action finally resumed, there were 20 minutes left on the clock – 20 minutes to try to hang on.
On new Michelin rubber, Alpine’s Martins – who had swiftly scythed through from fifth to second – inexorably hunted his prey, feinting this way and that over the closing laps as he endeavoured to find a way through, but Hirakawa produced one of the undisputed drives of his career to determinedly hold firm.
Despite the onset of rain further complicating his task, the double world champion took the chequered flag less than six tenths-of-a-second in front to cement the #8 crew’s second victory of the campaign after Imola back in April – reinstating the trio at the top of the Drivers’ table with only two rounds remaining.
“This is one of our best wins in a long time,” Buemi reflected. “I’m really proud of this one, especially because it was completely unexpected. Lately, races seem to have come down to crucial calls, and the team made a great one at the last pit-stop. We anticipated it would take a long time to repair the guardrail, so we fuelled a bit less and passed everybody in the pits – it was an amazing strategic move.
“With the amount of fuel we put in, if the race had gone ‘green’ straightaway, we wouldn’t have got to the end [without pitting again] – and even after taking the lead, Ryō still had to stay ahead, but he didn’t make any mistakes in difficult conditions.
“We definitely didn’t have the pace – we were just the eighth-fastest car on the track – but we managed to win on strategy, which was a massive achievement. You couldn’t dream of anything better!”
“What an incredible race!” echoed Hartley. “Congratulations to the whole team, and I was so happy for Ryō to take the chequered flag in his home event. We had so much support over the weekend, and this is an amazing feeling that we’re going to enjoy for a while.
“We didn’t have the ultimate pace, but for the most part, we had a faultless race – thanks to good execution, no mistakes on-track and an incredible strategy call at the end, we came away with the win.
“We’ve been unlucky a couple of times this year, but this time, we nailed it and outfoxed the rest of the field. Now we need to take this confidence into the final two races and try to hold on to our championship lead.”
The #8 crew supplanted the sister #7 Toyota at the summit of the standings, after 24 Hours of Le Mans winners Mike Conway, Nyck de Vries and Kamui Kobayashi suffered a variety of setbacks. The Dutchman picked up an early puncture and subsequently spun following contact with Ferdinand Habsburg while fighting for the lead, with the Japanese star later receiving a drive-through penalty for speeding during a Full Course Yellow.
The trio ultimately recovered to eighth to stay in the hunt for world championship honours, ten points behind their team-mates in the Drivers’ battle, while Toyota has extended its advantage over BMW in the Manufacturers’ classification from nine points to 23.
“For our car, it was a bit difficult and we didn’t have a clean enough race,” acknowledged Kobayashi, who doubles up as Team Principal. “We were a little bit off the pace generally, so we were always chasing and that defined our day, but congratulations to the whole team for the victory, and particularly the #8 crew who had such a strong race. Winning at Fuji is very important to us. Everybody worked so hard for this, and we all kept fighting until the very end.”
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