Sebastien Buemi believed Toyota was out of contention for the World Endurance Championship manufacturers’ crown when he began the comeback that yielded the Japanese car maker the title in Bahrain.
The Swiss “thought we were done” in his bid to take the victory Toyota needed to steal the championship from Porsche, when the race went green after the second of two late safety cars with 90 minutes of the eight hours remaining.
Buemi was down in 10th aboard the #8 Toyota GR010 HYBRID Le Mans Hypercar in which he took the win with Brendon Hartley and Ryo Hirakawa.
“I thought we were out of it,” Buemi told Autosport. “But I thought, 'f**k it' and took a lot of risks - I was going to overtake or DNF.”
Buemi explained that the negative assessment of his chances followed his struggles when battling in the Hypercar pack earlier in the race.
He had led from the pole position claimed by Hartley, only to be punted off after 18 minutes by the #83 TF Sport Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R with Hiroshi Koizumi at the wheel.
That dropped him to seventh and he struggled to make forward progress and was unable to pass Rene Rast in the #20 WRT BMW M Hybrid V8 LMDh before jumping the German car at the first round of pitstops.
“Those 20 laps behind the BMW really damaged the tyres,” said Buemi. “So I was thinking I might be able to pass two or three cars, not to overtake everyone and come through to the front.”
Buemi began his charge 15 seconds from the front of the pack and took the lead in the space of 25 laps when he made the move on Matt Campbell in the #5 Porsche 963 LMDh.
He explained that Toyota’s tyre strategy proved decisive in the closing stages. The #8 Toyota started the race on Michelin’s medium compound unlike the majority.
Buemi believed that this was better than the hard on the GR010, but only when the car was in clean air.
“The only way to make the mediums work was to be out front and take it a little bit easy,” he said.
“But I had to cut short my second stint because I damaged the tyres trying to come back [after the incident with the Corvette].
“We considered putting Brendon on the hards, but we decided not to do it to have more fresh tyres for the end of the race.
“We knew the #5 Porsche had been using more tyres than us so at some point it was going to start to struggle.”
Buemi was able to pull away from Campbell, who lost out to the #51 Ferrari 499P LMH with Antonio Giovinazzi at the wheel on the final lap.
The winning margin for the Toyota over the Italian car Giovinazzi shared with James Calado and Alessandro Pier Guidi was 27s.
That became 29s when the Ferrari was penalised for exceeding its tyre allocation and dropped to 14th.
Toyota’s hopes of sealing a sixth consecutive WEC manufacturers’ title rested on the #8 car after the sister GR010 retired late in the sixth hour with a fuel pump issue.
The Japanese marque went into the Bahrain 8 Hours weekend 10 points behind Porsche in the standings, which became nine after Hartley’s pole.
Porsche took the 2024 WEC Hypercar drivers’ title with its #6 entry shared by Laurens Vanthoor, Andre Lotterer and Kevin Estre.
