A victory that serves as a light at the end of the tunnel for Toyota

In recent seasons, Toyota had to abandon, one by one, its historic strongholds in the world championshipEnduranceBahrain remains the sacred ground of the Japanese brand! Toyota indeed triumphed there for the ninth consecutive time this Saturday, with the GR010s #7 and #8 even achieving a one-two finish, allowing the Japanese manufacturer to take second place in the final championship standings, behind Classic Ferrari for sale.

The crew of car number 7, consisting of Mike conway, Kamui Kobayashi et Nyck de Vries He was therefore the one who had the pleasure of bringing a victory in the last race of the season to Toyota, which will field an evolution of its GR010 next year. The British driver expressed his joy and perhaps above all his relief during the post-race press conference.

“It’s a great way to finish what was a truly difficult season. There were moments when we were quite frustrated, that’s true, but winning like this is a great reward for the team that worked so hard all weekend. We knew we had a good chance of winning here, and to finish with a double, we couldn’t have imagined anything better. The whole team did a fantastic job.”

For Kamui Kobayashi, who combines his role as driver with that of Team Principal, the nature of the Bahrain circuit meant that the GR010 started with a legitimate status as favorite. However, given Toyota's performance last season, it's difficult to approach the race with a winning mentality, even on a track where they've won eight times in a row!

“The whole team has worked incredibly hard throughout this season. We knew from free practice that we had a chance, but given how much we've struggled this year, we knew it was going to be a real challenge to win. We were quite surprised by our performance this weekend. We had a significant advantage with both cars on the front row. The Ferraris were quite fast in the race, but we were able to manage our positions at the start. It's been a very difficult season, but all the hard work from the team has allowed us to win here. We'll have a new car next year, but we're also happy to have been able to extract some performance from this one as well.”

"A well-deserved reward"

Nyck de Vries, who was in charge of bringing the No. 7 car "home", praised the work of the entire team, but did not fail to point out that the first intervention of the safety car could have cost his car, and therefore his trio, dearly!

“The team really showed great promise today, from the drivers, mechanics, and engineers. The Safety Cars weren't always in our favor, especially the first one, as it gave everyone a free pit stop. We managed to make the mid-race work, and then we had a good lead going into the final Safety Car at the end of the race. I'm very happy to give this well-deserved reward to the whole team after a difficult season.”

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