Kazuki Nakajima believes Toyota can hope for a good result in this weekend's Bahrain rounds of the FIA World Endurance Championship despite the Success Ballast gap to rivals Rebellion and Ginetta.
Nakajima's #8 Toyota TS050 Hybrid will be slowed down by 2.72s at the Bapco 8 Hours of Bahrain, which is the heaviest penalty of any car in the championship's top class. The #7 sister car will be running 2.51s slower.
The Japanese driver was present at last week's FIA Hall of Fame ceremony in Paris, where he was inducted for winning the 2018/19 Super Season alongside Fernando Alonso and Sebastien Buemi.
When speaking to Motorsport Week after the ceremony, Nakajima talked about his expectations and goals for the final race of 2019.
"It’s going to be an eight hour race, which is a bit longer than usual," he said.
"So even with a lot of handicap compared to the other teams like Rebellion and Ginetta, I think we still have a good chance to do well in the race. We just need to focus on making no mistakes, making no trouble.
Speed wise, it’s probably gonna be difficult because of the handicap. But as it’s quite a long race, we’re still looking for a good result."
Nakajima, Buemi and Brendon Hartley travel to Sakhir with a three point lead over the sister trio of Jose Maria Lopez, Mike Conway and Kamui Kobayashi, Toyota Gazoo Racing currently holds a lead of 27 points over Rebellion Racing, who took victory last time out in Shanghai. Team LNT sits in third place with 29 points.
The Bapco 8 Hours of Bahrain takes place on Saturday, December 14th and starts at 15:00 local time.
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