Qualifying frustration for TOYOTA RACING

TOYOTA RACING will start the 6 Hours of São Paulo from outside the top 10 after an intensely competitive qualifying contest for the fourth round of the 2026 FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC).

The team leads both World Championships following its Le Mans victory last month but has experienced a challenging time so far in Brazil. After a difficult opening day of free practice on Friday, those frustrations continued.

Just 0.739secs covered all 17 Hypercars in a very close qualifying. Sébastien Buemi, Brendon Hartley and Ryō Hirakawa were 14th in the #8 TR010 HYBRID. Le Mans winners and World Championship leaders Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi and Nyck de Vries finished qualifying in 16th place in their #7 TR010 HYBRID.

Preparations for qualifying accelerated in third practice, which gave engineers and drivers the chance to evaluate set-up changes made since Friday’s session. After an hour of practice, the results – with the #8 in 12th and the #7 in 14th – already indicated that qualifying could be tough for the TR010 HYBRIDs.

Kamui and Ryō, who set their car’s fastest laps in third practice early in the session, took the wheel for qualifying and fought hard to achieve the top-10 position required to reach Hyperpole. On a sunny afternoon, with temperatures hitting 27°C, both drivers pushed throughout the 12-minute session and improved their lap times consistently but missed out on Hyperpole by a fraction of a second.

Despite the qualifying result, the team will take on Sunday’s race determined to score more valuable points to defend its advantage in the manufacturers’ World Championship. The 6 Hours of São Paulo begins at 11.30am local time (4.30pm CEST).

Quotes:

Kamui Kobayashi (Team Principal and driver, car #7): “Obviously qualifying was not what we wanted, but we have struggled this week. It's going to be a hard race for tomorrow, but we will do our best to score as many points as we can for the World Championship. Hopefully we can make it an exciting race for all the fans here in Brazil. We will do our best.”

Ryō Hirakawa (Driver, car #8): “It was a tough qualifying, but we did everything we could. My best lap was clean, and we maximised our package. I think we have reasonable race pace, but the weather is a big unknown tomorrow. So far this season we have done a good job with strategy, so we need to be very sharp on that side and hopefully we can score good points tomorrow.”

Provisional results, correct at time of publication. For full results, please visit https://fiawec.alkamelsystems.com

Click here to access the 2026 TOYOTA RACING WEC press kit. Click here to download rights-free video material of the TR010 HYBRID.