Mike Conway is hopeful Toyota’s performance and pace at Le Mans will be better compared to the previous rounds in the FIA World Endurance Championship this year, he told Motorsport Week.
“Yeah, I think when we saw the list come out last week, it makes us a bit more optimistic’ he said.
“That’s kind of what it boils down to in the end. But yeah, test day seemed to be alright, still some areas I think we’re not super good but hopefully we’ve got good enough to be up front.”
The ‘list’ Conway mentions is the all-important Balance of Performance, which governs each team’s weight and power for the race. With Toyota’s GR010 Hybrid possessing a 0.494kW/kg power-to-weight ratio, compared to Ferrari also on 0.494kW/kg and Porsche 0.003 less on 0.491kW/kg, Conway believes it’ll be between these teams.
‘They [Ferrari] started out very quick then Porsche very quick as well. I think we looked decent at the end but not 100% sure – there’s still some areas. We look all the mini sectors that we’re not that good. So yeah, still some areas to improve.’
Porsche’s top speed and Cadillac’s high speed prowess
He followed this up with some thoughts on the competition.
‘Top speeds of the Porsche look very good, so that’ll be hard to recover. Top speed is… you’ve got what you got really, you can’t add speed orbs on. So yeah, Porsche look good there.
‘Ferrari just kind of looks solid everywhere. Cadillac looked very good on high speed corners, stuff like that, Porsche Curves looked very quick.’
Conway’s assessment of the performance lines up with the data available. In free practice 1 on Wednesday, Porsche had the fastest top speed, with Michael Christensen recording a 344.5kph at the speed trap, located just before the Mulsanne Straight’s first chicane.Cadillac and Ferrari were just 1.1kph slower, but the two Toyotas could only manage 339.1kph — 5.4kph slower than the Porsche, and one of the slowest Hypercar manufacturers overall in terms of top speed.
Equally, in the third sector, from Mulsanne corner at the end of the straight until the end of the lap. This, then, includes Porsche Curves as a major part of the sector — and as Conway says, Cadillac set a session best in sector 3 of 1:3.796, with Sebastien Bourdais in the #38 car. This was almost a tenth quicker than anyone else, and almost two tenths up on Toyota.
Conway talks tyres
As Conway isn’t one of Toyota’s two qualifying drivers, he can focus in practice on the race, and how he can best save the tyres around a lap of Circuit de la Sarthe.
‘I’m not going to get new tyres until the race,” he said, laughing.
“So that’s a bit annoying, because then you you never know where you stand a little bit. But just the way it is, the way they’re doing it this year.
“It makes it trickier because because tyres around here, you definitely have a good peak on the first few laps and then by the end of the day…
in the race, you’re going to be trying to get those tyres to three, four stints. That’s mainly what it’s about. So I’ll just be focusing on that stuff.”
With three different tyre compounds at Le Mans — soft, medium, and hard — teams have a range to choose from for the race.
“Yeah, it seemed like medium was preferred by most people, I would say on Sunday [test day].
“And the soft obviously, that comes into play once the track is certain temperature. So, definitely at night, I would say you’re going to be using the soft. And then in those mixed conditions, the soft works pretty well. But yeah, I’d say [in conditions] like today, it’ll be medium for sure.”
Hard tyre ‘doesn’t offer what we need’
But what of the hard tyre? According to the Briton this doesn’t work as well on the GR010.
“I don’t think so for us,’ he said, when asked about using the hard tyre.
“No. But maybe if other teams need it, I don’t know. I just think it doesn’t offer us what we needed to offer us.
“I mean, just because it’s hard, okay, maybe it will last longer, but sometimes it doesn’t really last longer, it’s just got less grip.
“So it’s kind of… it doesn’t always work how you want it to work sometimes.
“I feel like everyone’s a bit more together this year, I would say, on the tyre choices. I’d say like the year before maybe other teams are using are harder compounds to get through the double stints where we could use maybe a softer.
“But I feel like for this track, the speed, the energy, soft is… it gets a bit overworked through the high speed corners. But maybe some teams can use it,” he concluded.
However, qualifying for the #7 Toyota crew didn’t go to plan, with Conway’s teammate Nyck de Vries being knocked out, meaning he or the team won’t proceed to Hyperpole on Thursday. Instead, they will start this year’s 24 Hours of Le Mans from 17th, giving them work to do in the race.
READ MORE: Cadillac’s Alex Lynn fastest in Hypercar qualifying at Le Mans
