Toyota Gazoo Racing’s Pascal Vasselon has said that the Japanese squad is happy with the ground the team covered during Test Day, while also stating that he is happy about Glickenhaus setting the fastest time of the day as it is ‘good for the series’.
The pair of GR010 Hybrids covered significant ground during Sunday’s nine hours of running at the Circuit de la Sarthe, but were ultimately beaten to the fastest time of the day by Glickenhaus’ Olivier Pla.
Despite that, Vasselon was upbeat about Toyota’s progress and performance during the testing sessions ahead of the 89th running of the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
“We had a very high mileage,” he said after the session. “Both cars are above 1,400 kilometers, which is a record I think for us on the test day. We had a lot of test items, we could do nearly all of them.
“This is why we had quite a lot of results to review. Globally very good session, we are getting the performance window we had somehow anticipated.”
Vasselon went on to explain that Toyota’s simulator models that it had prior to the cars actually running at the Circuit de la Sarthe matched with the data that the team has gathered after Sunday’s running had been completed.
“It’s always difficult because when we run in the simulator, we run with correlated grip to the previous year. So if we have the same grip as the previous year, we are where we expected to be, which is the case.
“If the grip had been much higher or much lower, we would have had discrepancies. Globally, we got the track grip which we had in our models. So in terms of performance, we are just below 3.30 [minutes per lap] which is what we were expecting.”
Despite Toyota topping the timesheets for most of the day and Brendon Hartley setting the fastest time in the morning, the reigning Le Mans winners were knocked off the top spot at the end of the session by a fast lap from the #708 Glickenhaus 007 LMH driven by Olivier Pla.
Pla laid down a time of 03:29:115, quickest of all on Sunday. Vasselon says he is glad that Glickenhaus and other rivals Alpine were on the pace throughout the day, as it is a good omen for this weekend’s race.
“It’s really good. We are happy for them and for the series, because it is good that there is competition. It would not be at all entertaining if they two seconds or three seconds off the pace.”
“So it’s very good news, it means there should be a race. We have several cars which are in the same ballpark .The three different cars are within one second. It’s perfect.”
Toyota had far from a bulletproof race during the previous round of the FIA World Endurance Championship, with the #8 car in particular suffering significant fuel pressure problems.
When asked, Vasselon says that the team were looking at the car to see if any similar issues would reoccur, but that this did not occur. The team did also not suffer any additional issues.
“Yes, of course we were looking at it, but the countermeasures we implemented are working, so there is no issue at the moment. We have spent nine hours, which have been quiet from a reliability point of view.”
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