TOYOTA GAZOO Racing is ready for a tough and exciting battle in next week’s 4 Hours of Shanghai when it faces an unprecedented challenge to its superiority in the third round of the 2019-2020 FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC).
The reigning World Champions and 2018-2019 Le Mans winners have incurred the maximum success handicap of 2.74secs per lap as a result of a perfect start to the WEC season, which continued with another one-two victory on home soil at Fuji Speedway last month.
With both crews tied on points at the top of the World Championship standings, they will have identical TS050 HYBRIDs and the team is looking forward to a close fight in the third of eight races this season.
The #8 TS050 HYBRID of Sébastien Buemi, Kazuki Nakajima and Brendon Hartley won at Fuji from Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi and José María López in the #7 car. That result mirrored the first race of the season at Silverstone, where the #7 led home a TOYOTA GAZOO Racing one-two.
“We are heading to Shanghai on equal points as our team-mates in the #8 car and the non-hybrid LMP1 cars should be closer, so I am expecting an elbows-out, exciting battle,” commented Hartley. “I am sure everyone is really looking forward to the fight. Personally, I am also looking forward to driving the TS050 HYBRID on the Shanghai circuit for the first time; the efficiency and performance of these LMP1 hybrid cars is always impressive.”
A repeat of those one-two victories is the target in Shanghai, where the team has won four of its seven WEC races so far, although a tough challenge is expected from the non-hybrid LMP1 competitors, Rebellion Racing and Ginetta.
Unlike every previous WEC race in Shanghai, which ran for six hours and leading cars completed just over 1,000km in normal circumstances, this year will see a four-hour contest begin at midday local time on Sunday. Track activity begins on Friday with three hours of practice on the 5.451km Shanghai International Circuit.
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