A bit of tweaking of the Balance of Performance resulted in a sense of foreboding among Toyota’s rivals ahead of last weekend’s World Endurance Championship finale. “Unless they do something wrong they are going to finish 1-2,” reckoned a driver from one of those competitors in advance of the cars hitting the track.
The Japanese manufacturer might not have notched up a podium in the first of the seven races of the 2025 campaign, but there was good reason for that pessimism. The helping hand Toyota received under the BoP, and the reverse that came the way of some of its rivals in the Hypercar class, arrived in time for a race that it has made its own over the years. The Bahrain International Circuit had hosted 13 WEC rounds before Saturday and Toyota had won 10 of them. More to the point, its GR010 HYBRID Le Mans Hypercar was unbeaten around the 3.63 miles of the Middle Eastern venue over both six and eight hours.
