TOYOTA GAZOO Racing made a productive start to round five of the 2025 FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC) during the opening two free practice sessions for the 6 Hours of São Paulo at Interlagos.
The second half of the season begins in Brazil and sees a return to action again after last month’s Le Mans 24 Hours, in which the leading GR010 HYBRID finished fifth. At a venue where it has won twice in four visits, including a dominant victory 12 months ago, the team expects a tough challenge to return to the podium against intense competition from an 18-strong Hypercar field.
Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi and Nyck de Vries, who started last year’s race from pole position, ended the day seventh fastest in their #7 GR010 HYBRID. Last year’s winners Brendon Hartley and Ryo Hirakawa – competing together as a two-driver crew for the first time in the #8 GR010 HYBRID due to Sébastien Buemi’s other racing commitments – were 16th.
In sunshine and temperatures of around 20°C, first practice began slightly late due to technical issues, but the team wasted no time getting to work on a programme to adapt to the resurfaced 4.309km circuit and establish baseline set-ups. That includes brief spells in the garage for set-up adjustments to tune the GR010 HYBRIDs to the unique demands of Interlagos’ anti-clockwise lay-out.
In the three hours between sessions, drivers provided detailed feedback to engineers to help identify the areas of car set-up and balance to improve ahead of second practice. As well as testing those set-up changes, second practice allowed further analysis of the Michelin tyres. Another 90 minutes without significant interruption, combined with a trouble-free day for both cars, meant the team successfully completed its full programme of analysis and comparisons.
Third practice on Saturday morning offers the team a final opportunity to optimise its cars before qualifying and Hyperpole, which will determine the starting order and begins for Hypercars at 3.25pm local time (8.25pm CEST). The race itself starts at 11.30am (4.30pm CEST) on Sunday.
Kamui Kobayashi (Team Principal and driver, car #7): “It’s nice to be back in Brazil. We had two clean sessions, and we are in the process of optimising our car for this circuit, especially considering there is a new track surface which changes things compared to last year. We are not on the pace that we hoped for, so we need to work to find more performance and we will try our best to do that.”
Mike Conway (Driver, car #7): “Both sessions were quite different in terms of how the car felt so we need to understand that a bit more. I don’t know how much we can improve because it feels like some others are just a bit quicker. But we will try to find as much as we can and see what we can bring for qualifying and the race. We will keep pushing and aiming for a strong result.”
Nyck de Vries (Driver, car #7): “I had a good day, I had fun. The day went smoothly, and we made some progress on car balance between the two sessions, but I don’t think we are competitive enough. We are pretty much where we have been all season; some of our competitors look stronger than us. Tyre degradation is still quite important here even with the new surface so it’s important that we get on top of that for the race.”
Brendon Hartley (Driver, car #8): “It’s nice to be back in São Paulo; I really enjoy this track. We experienced the resurfaced track and had two smooth sessions with no issues. We are clearly in a tight midfield battle so we will work hard overnight to find more pace. It was a new experience for me having only two drivers in our crew. The positive aspect is we get more laps, but we do also miss the input from Séb.”
Ryo Hirakawa (Driver, car #8): “It was a tricky day but also a productive one. The focus was to assess the resurfaced track and how the tyres behaved. We did a lot of laps, so we have a lot of data to work with. I had a good number of laps which helped me get to know the car on this track. The field is quite tight so it’s going to be a challenging race, and we need to get the most out of our package.”
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The 2025 TOYOTA GAZOO Racing WEC press kit, along with rights-free video material and photography of all TOYOTA GAZOO Racing’s motorsports projects, can be found at https://toyotagazooracing.com/media/.
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