\u201cIt was a real team effort as well, and it\u2019s not often you take a race victory with a feeling like that. There was an amazing crowd at Imola and the podium was a beautiful moment. It felt like a special day.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Imola race was the 100th World Endurance Championship (WEC) race with hybrid power, and more importantly from Toyota\u2019s point of view, it was the Japanese manufacturer\u2019s 50th victory.<\/p>\n
The Toyota TR010 Hybrid in action during the WEC championship opener at Imola. Photo \/ Toyota Racing PR<\/p>\n
Hartley\u2019s car started from the front row and the Kiwi ran third in his opening stint. A slick first pit stop moved the team into second, with Hirakawa moving into the lead by half race distance. He pulled a small gap over the chasing Ferrari, which Buemi extended in the final two hours, and despite tricky track conditions during a light shower, managed to hold off the chasing pack until the chequered flag.<\/p>\n
The team take that winning momentum into the second of eight rounds this season at the iconic Spa-Francorchamps track, a favourite for many drivers and fans. At just over 7km long, the circuit winds through the Ardennes forest and is made up of fast, undulating sectors at the start and end, separated by a tight, more technical middle stretch. And of course there\u2019s the fan favourite \u2013 the high-speed and butt-clenching Eau Rouge corner.<\/p>\n
Spa-Francorchamps is the last competitive outing for all the teams before preparations start for the Le Mans 24 Hour on June 13-14. Drivers, mechanics and engineers will be working hard to gain as much data as possible from high-speed corners at Spa like Raidillon, Pouhon and Blanchimont, as well as the long, flat-out Kemmel Straight, that require car set-ups similar to the Circuit de la Sarthe.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think for almost every driver, Spa is one of the most challenging and rewarding circuits. It\u2019s an old-school circuit, with undulations and some fast corners,\u201d Hartley said.<\/p>\n
The Toyota TR010 Hybrid at speed during the Imola race. Photo \/ Toyota Racing PR<\/p>\n
\u201cYou need to be precise and committed; it\u2019s a real drivers\u2019 track. Our season started really well with victory on the car\u2019s debut, so we\u2019ll be pushing to keep that form going at Spa and then into Le Mans.\u201d <\/p>\n
The first hit-out at Spa consisted of two 90-minute free practices. In the first practice the Toyota engineers were using the first run at Spa to test specific set-ups for the track, and Hartley\u2019s No 8 car was 13th-fastest and the sister No 7 car was 10th.<\/p>\n
However, the second practice was different once the cars were dialled in, with Hartley and Kobayashi setting the best times of the day in their respective cars.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a smooth day with no major dramas. It\u2019s obviously very competitive at the front, which is exactly what we expected.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are lacking a little bit, particularly compared to Imola. But we are also working hard to try to extract a bit more lap time out of the car,\u201d Hartley said.<\/p>\n
The race gets underway at 12am on Sunday NZ time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cIt was a real team effort as well, and it\u2019s not often you take a race victory with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":418866,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[2246,432,23299,92233,18239,19552,20301,215139,11551,78,296,702,111,139,69,90,3512,146151,18833,6926,8466,215140,213,1120,1961,61,4767,6923,6027,377],"class_list":["post-418865","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-2246","tag-action","tag-belgium","tag-brendon","tag-championship","tag-driver","tag-endurance","tag-hartley","tag-hours","tag-in","tag-into","tag-it","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-on","tag-racing","tag-roars","tag-round","tag-season","tag-second","tag-spafrancorchamps","tag-sports","tag-takes","tag-this","tag-to","tag-weekend","tag-what","tag-win","tag-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418865","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=418865"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418865\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/418866"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=418865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=418865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=418865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}