Toyota's Buemi expects closer fight at Portimao, Ferrari "biggest threat"

Buemi believes Toyota’s two-lap winning margin at the Sebring 1000 Miles was an unrepresentative result and that the six-hour race at Portimao will offer a better picture of how competitive its rivals in the Hypercar class will be in 2023.

“It looked a lot because in the end we won by two laps,” said Buemi, who ended up second to the sister Toyota with team-mates Brendon Hartley and Ryo Hirakawa aboard the #8 GR010 HYBRID Le Mans Hypercar.

“But we didn’t get a drive-through, we didn’t make any mistakes in strategy or in traffic, and we didn’t have any contact.

“After eight hours, it looked like a big gap, but it wasn’t in terms of the lap times.”

Buemi pointed out that Antonio Fuoco, who finished third in the best of the Ferrari 499P LMHs, was “very close to us” in terms of lap time but that “we were a bit more consistent”.

The Swiss suggested that Sebring International Raceway didn’t offer a true picture of the relative competitiveness of Toyota’s competition this year from Ferrari, Porsche, Peugeot and Cadillac.

“Sebring is a special track so I’m not sure we have a clear picture yet of where everyone is in terms of performance; Portimao will give us a much clearer indication,” he said.

“We also need to keep in mind that [many of] our competitors are new in the championship and every race they will have a steep learning curve and they will get better and better.”

Buemi is expecting a strong challenge from the factory AF Corse Ferrari team, which claimed pole with Fuoco at Sebring.

#50 Ferrari AF Corse Ferrari 499P: Antonio Fuoco, Miguel Molina, Nicklas Nielsen

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

“After Sebring you would have to say that Ferrari will be the biggest threat,” said Buemi.

“They were very fast and had good reliability; I was very impressed by them.”

Buemi insisted that it was difficult to make too many predictions going into the week of the Portimao 6 Hours because of a revised Balance of Performance.

Two different BoP tables were published pre-season, one covering Sebring and one the next three races up to and including the Le Mans 24 Hours in June.

“There are quite a few factors that are different to predict and the first one is that we have a different BoP,” he said.

Toyota Gazoo Racing team principal Kamui Kobayashi, who won at Sebring with Mike Conway and Jose Maria Lopez, pointed out that some of the Japanese marque’s rivals have greater recent experience of the Autodromo Internacional do Algarve.

“Many of our rivals have tested there recently, but we will be driving there for the first time since April last year,” he said.

“This means we need to work hard during the practice sessions to find the right set-ups and tyre strategies.”

Practice for the second round of the WEC at Portimao begins at 10:30 local time on 14 April, with the race starting at 12:00 on 16 April.