The Toyota Gazoo Racing team has admitted that it lost the World Endurance Championship (WEC) titles this year despite winning five of the nine races, practically handing them over to rival Porsche.
Toyota Motorsport GmbH technical director Pascal Vasselon said this after the team won the 6 Hours of Bahrain finale last weekend, according to Motorsport.com. The three back-to-back victories scored by the #8 team of Sebastien Buemi, Kazuki Nakajima and Anthony Davidson at the end of the season didn’t stop Porsche from clinching both drivers’ and manufacturers’ titles at the previous race in Shanghai.
“It’s satisfying because it was our target [to win more races than Porsche],” said Vasselon of the win. “It puts a different light on the season, because we have dominated on performance in six races out of nine and we managed to not win the championship. So basically I can say, we have lost the championship. Porsche did not really win it. But that’s life, that’s motorsport.”
Vasselon added that the turning point of the #8 team’s title chances – after winning the opening races in Silverstone and Spa-Francorchamps – was at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. There, a hybrid system failure relegated the car to eighth place in a race that saw two other Toyotas and one Porsche retire.
“For car #8, we clearly lost it at Le Mans,” he said. “For the manufacturers’, we have made too many mistakes. We could have had two one-twos in the last two races, but we had a couple of accidents.” Vasselon was referring to the #7 car’s collisions with GTE Pro class Porsches in the Shanghai and Bahrain rounds, preventing it from finishing behind its sister car on both occasions.
Toyota has said that a development push late in the season – which enabled a flow of new aerodynamic parts starting from the Fuji round – was the reason behind its last-minute successes. The team will be the last manufacturer-backed outfit in the top class next year, after Porsche announced earlier in the year that it would pull out of the 2018/2019 championship.
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- TOYOTA GAZOO Racing. World Endurance Championship. 6 Hours of Bahrain 15th – 18th November 2017 Bahrain International Circuit, Bahrain.
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- TOYOTA GAZOO Racing. World Endurance Championship. 6 Hours of Bahrain 15th – 18th November 2017 Bahrain International Circuit, Bahrain.
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- TOYOTA GAZOO Racing. World Endurance Championship. 6 Hours of Bahrain 15th – 18th November 2017 Bahrain International Circuit, Bahrain.
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- TOYOTA GAZOO Racing. World Endurance Championship. 6 Hours of Bahrain 15th – 18th November 2017 Bahrain International Circuit, Bahrain.
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- TOYOTA GAZOO Racing. World Endurance Championship. 6 Hours of Bahrain 15th – 18th November 2017 Bahrain International Circuit, Bahrain.
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- TOYOTA GAZOO Racing. World Endurance Championship. 6 Hours of Bahrain 15th – 18th November 2017 Bahrain International Circuit, Bahrain.
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- TOYOTA GAZOO Racing. World Endurance Championship. 6 Hours of Bahrain 15th – 18th November 2017 Bahrain International Circuit, Bahrain.
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- TOYOTA GAZOO Racing. World Endurance Championship. 6 Hours of Bahrain 15th – 18th November 2017 Bahrain International Circuit, Bahrain.
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Toyota still try to promote themselves despite being a clear loser of having reliable cars… all their cars were affected with issues during the race!
Toyota is now Porsche class.
Posh more reliable than Toyota. Lolz!
What happen to their mythical reliability?
Agree. Typical sore loser comment from Toyota. This is an endurance race whereby consistency and reliability is the key to winning
Porsche is the racing team to beat – with the experience they carry since time immemorial, they are not to be scoffed at. They go racing to win and nothing else, so Toyota had better think about that. If Toyota thinks that they lost to Porsche, then Porsche will say that the better team won – nothing more.
“Ask any racer, any real racer. It doesn’t matter if you win by an inch or a mile, winning’s winning.”
– Dominic Toretto, The Fast and The Furious
Kesian Toyota. With Porsche out, any victory after will feel hollow. Porsche cruelly robbed them a chance to beat them at their own game.
Despite being the pioneer of hybrid system, in racing environment the Japanese lost out to the Germans. BUT, if the top LMP class is devoid of any hybrid stuffs, Toyota could have easily defeated Porsche this year. And next year, Toyota’s situation is very similar to what Audi had at the start of the new millenium (which strangely happened after Toyota was within the grasp of winning 1999 edition Le Mans and ended their Le Mans programme shortly after)..
In any races be it WEC or F1, there will be ONLY one winner & many looser. For that, we should congratulate the Winner(Porsche).
Does loosing the championship mean U are a looser !! NO. It is by loosing, U will improve your products & use it as part of your R&D. That is called learning/progressing.
Only manufacturer who do Not participate in races does NOT win. Tell me can a car manufacturer win/improve their products if they did not participate ??!
Thomas Edison have “failed” many times B4 he succeeded in creating the Light Bulb.