When the Toyota GR010 Hybrid facing the 8 Hours of Portimão next weekend (June 12th and 13th), the Japanese brand's hypercar will be doing much more than simply competing in the second round of the World Endurance Championship (WEC).
After all, it is in Portimão that Toyota will celebrate 100 races in the World Endurance Championship, signing yet another chapter in a story that began in 1983 with the Toyota 83C.
The Autódromo Internacional do Algarve (AIA) also gains relevance for being a kind of “second home” for Toyota: the circuit has been used to develop its competition prototypes in recent years.
A “family” circuit
Despite the Portimão Circuit being a rookie on the WEC calendar — it will be the 21st circuit on which Toyota prototypes will race since the brand's debut in this championship —, as mentioned, the Portuguese track is not unknown to Toyota Gazoo Racing and after the victory in the first race of the season at Spa-Francorchamps, the Japanese team arrives in our country with justified ambitions.
World champion in title, Toyota faces rivals such as Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus and Alpine in the Algarve (both with only one car in the competition). To face them, Toyota Gazoo Racing will line up two GR10 Hybrids.
The first, with number 8, belongs to the leaders of the drivers' championship, the trio Sébastien Buemi, Kazuki Nakajima and Brendon Hartley. In Toyota No. 7, the title champions line up, drivers Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi and José María López, who finished the first race in third place.
a long walk
With 99 races played in the World Endurance Championship, Toyota has a total of 31 victories and 78 podiums in 56 races.
Although the debut took place in 1983, it took 1992, and the Japanese brand's third full season in the championship, to see Toyota's colors in the highest place on the podium, with the victory of the TS010 at Monza.
Since then, Swiss Sébastien Buemi has established himself as the driver with the most wins for Toyota in the championship (18 wins) and the one who most often took the controls of a prototype of the Japanese brand, with 60 races played so far.
After three days of traveling in a truck, the Toyota GR010 Hybrid hit the track on Friday afternoon with their first practice session. Qualification is scheduled for Saturday and on Sunday, at 11 am, Toyota's 100th race in the World Endurance Championship starts.