Frustrating qualifying session for Toyota in Brazil

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).

Taking pole position and the first Hypercar point of the Rolex 6 Hours of Sao Paulo weekend was the #12 Cadillac Hertz Team JOTA Hypercar.       

Will Stevens pushed to a peak lap of 1m23.041s to just beat the sister #38 Cadillac driven by Jack Aitken by a slender 0.048s.

The Toyota 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, but the #7 TR010 HYBRID will start one place further back due to a grid penalty for impeding another driver.

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).