''That was all we had today'': Toyota reflects on tough Spa qualifying - Prepares to ''fight hard'' on race day

Credit: Noah Romana

Toyota will attempt a repeat of last year's fight back in the 6 Hours of Spa World Endurance Championship (WEC) round, thanks to a disappointing qualifying session that saw both cars miss out on Hyperpole.

The qualifying session for this year's 6 Hours of Spa proved to be one of surprises. Among them, the complete abscence of Toyota from the Hyperpole session, as the team that leads the WEC standings after a spectacular 1-3 in the Imola season opener, saw its cars qualify only 12th and 16th respectively!

Perhaps affected by Balance of Performance (BoP) changes and given the fact that recently the Ardennes circuit has not proven favorable for the Japanese team, even after Friday's free practice sessions many inside Toyota were not happy with the TR010 Hybrid's performance.

All six drivers noted something along the lines of disappointment and struggle. Things did not improve on Saturday, as Kamui Kobayashi qualified the No.7 car in 12th, just missing out on Hyperpole by 0.029 seconds, while Brendon Hartley in the No.8 Imola-winning car, could only manage 16th, faster only than the No.17 Genesis Magma Racing car.

Credit: Toyota Racing Newsroom

As expected, neither the team nor the drivers are happy with the result. Driver and team principal Kamui Kobayashi said: ''I think I did a decent lap, but that was all we had today. We need to find something in terms of strategy and set-up for tomorrow. The race is going to be long, and we will do our best. We have momentum from the last race, so we will try to build on this.''

Meanwhile, Hartley admitted to making a mistake in his first lap, while also mentioning the need for further set-up work: ''It’s been a tough day for us. I didn’t get my first lap together very well. The car was a bit challenging today, and we couldn’t get the set-up and all the tools working perfectly. We have put most of our focus on race set-up and we are going to fight hard tomorrow. Hopefully we can make our way through the field to get some points'', commented the New Zealander.

Toyota have confessed to experimenting, by adopting different set-up approaches for each of the two TR010 Hypercars, a move that evidently did not pay-off for either car. The team now targets improvements in that area, as well as ''maximising strategy and tyre management, to move up the field on race day.''

Despite the extremely underwhelming qualifying, Toyota have been proven to have more in terms of race pace and a good strategy team, as was the case with last year's race, where again both cars failed to make the Hyperpole session, qualifying in 15th and 16th, but then going on to finish in fourth and seventh respectively.

The 6 Hours of Spa are scheduled to begin at 14:00 (13:00 BST), running all the way through until 20:00 local (19:00 BST), with the race available to watch for a fee on FIAWEC+.