Hypercar @ 6 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps 2021
Fifth victory in a row for Toyota at the 6 Hours of Spa. Lots of comments and questions during and after the prologue, about FIA and ACO new LMH formula. The answer was clear with Toyota Gazoo Racing’s Sebastien Buemi, Brendon Hartley and Kazuki Nakajima claiming the first win of the FIA World Endurance Championship’s Hypercar era. We are not going to complain that LMH are not 5” faster than LMP2, it creates more actions, more suspense, more surprises and better races for spectators… even in front of a screen ;-) Well done guys.
Alpine A480 Gibson non-hybrid LMP1#36 of Andre Negrao, Nicolas Lapierre and Matthieu Vaxiviere finished 3rd, 1’ 7” behind the winners.
They regularly took the lead of the race but had one more pit stop and suffered a puncture 40 minutes before the end. Alpine #36 regularly took the lead of the race as the Toyota GR010 stopped for pitting, but they had one more pit stop at the end.
Start of the #7 Toyota GR010 woes: after leading most of the first 5 hours of the race, Kamui Kobayashi went straight at Bruxelles … in the gravel. A drive-through penalty for a clash at Bus Stop between Lopez and the GTE-Pro Porsche #91 as well as a system reset at Les Combes made the LMH of Kamui Kobayashi, Mike Conway and Jose Maria Lopez finishing third, one lap behind the winning sister car. Kamui Kobayashi (Toyota GR010 #7) has a drive-through penalty.
