Toyota GAZOO Racing’s Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi and Jose Maria Lopez claimed overall victory Saturday (May 7) in the FIA World Endurance Championship TotalEnergies 6 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps at Belgium’s Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps. It is a great comeback for the team after Lopez spectacularly crashed at Sebring. It is also the team’s sixth straight victory at Spa.
Races at the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps are well-known for changeable conditions. Saturday was no exception. The race started out in bone dry conditions, but rains showed up in the second hour to slow the pace. Ultimately, there were two red flags during the race due to rain creating un-raceable conditions. By the time the race ended, the sun was out and there was a dry line on the track.
Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus’ Olivier Pla started from the pole and led early on. Meanwhile, Sebastien Buemi in the No. 8 Toyota moved up from fourth to second on the start and hunted Pla for the first half-hour of the race. On lap 16, Buemi was able to get past for the lead and began to pull away.
With all the bad weather in Spa, it was not actually rain that brought out the first red flag. Just over an hour into the race, ARC Bratislava’s Miroslav Konopka lost control exiting the Fagnes complex and hit the barrier hard.
The ARC Bratislava has hit the wall at the exit of T13. We are under safety car.#WEC #6HSpa pic.twitter.com/VLY1wXfjFn
— WEC (@FIAWEC) May 7, 2022
Konopka was reportedly dazed from the crash, which ended his day. The barriers had to be substantially repaired, resulting in a 20-minute red flag. This is mostly due to the fact that the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps is a Grade 1 circuit and cannot be run on if a crash makes it fall out of FIA homologation.
When the race resumed, Buemi’s Toyota turned traitor on him and stalled on-track with a technical issue. The team instructed Buemi to turn the car off and exit immediately without touching anything. …
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