How Toyota could have given #7 a win
When Jose Maria Lopez left the pits for the second time in two laps, with a shade under an hour of the 2019 Le Mans 24 Hours left on the clock and the chance of victory seemingly gone, the hierarchy on the pitwall at Toyota put their heads together. The #7 TS050 HYBRID the Argentinian shared with Mike Conway and Kamui Kobayashi had been the faster of the team’s two cars all race and had lost the win for the strangest of reasons. The question was: should they reverse the positions of the two cars?
The discussion ended up being very brief, recalls Toyota Gazoo Racing Europe technical director Pascal Vasselon. No one disagreed that the drivers of #7 would have been deserving winners but, as the Frenchman says, “racing is not just about the drivers.”
“What happened was extremely unfair to the drivers of #7, but it was also clearly related to the crew of #7,” he says. “If we had done something it would have been extremely unfair to the crew of #8, because they did not make a mistake and the crew of #7 did.”
The mistake of the #7 squad was to incorrectly wire the tyre-pressure warning system. The car had a punctured left-rear Michelin, but the system was showing it was the right-front. With a set of brand-new tyres having gone on the car when Lopez took over 13 laps earlier, it was decided to change just the ‘offending’ tyre. That necessitated another slow lap from Lopez and another pitstop at which all four wheels were changed.
“Swapping positions was talked about, but the discussion quickly ended simply because the race is about the whole crew of each car,” explains Vasselon. “You know what we say: you win together and you lose together.”
Vasselon points out that the decision was in line with Toyota’s long-standing approach to team orders. “We never decide who is going to win,” he explains. “We do not do what Ferrari has done in Formula 1 and ask a faster driver to move over. Our team orders are about letting a faster car move ahead.”
You might see that during Le Mans this year. Toyota has what might be called an ‘after you, Claude’ policy when it comes to overtaking. If one of its cars is faster and comes up behind the other, the driver in front has to cede position. Expect to see that at Le Mans again this year if the two GR010 HYBRIDS are running in close proximity.