Dream over for Toyota: Nyck de Vries’ car suffers a return of previous problems – the car falls hopelessly behind – Porsche 6 on course for the title
The title race in the World Endurance Championship (WEC) is all but decided: Toyota 7 (Conway/Kobayashi/de Vries) suffered a major setback in the fifth hour of the eight-hour race in Bahrain. An electronics problem that had already affected the car earlier in the race returned, and worse than before.
Update: The 6 Porsche (Estre/Lotterer/L. Vanthoor) had long since reached its target position after initial starting difficulties.
still seems to be having problemsWEC 8HBahrain pic.twitter.com/u1p TLbGKZC
— すめらぎ – Sumeragi (@0mrg) November 2, 2024
But de Vries quickly lost the lead to Alessandro Pier Guidi. And suddenly the misfires were back again. De Vries was instructed to stay away from the curbs and repeatedly press a button on the steering wheel called “Driver Default”. Apparently, this overrides the position of the electronic accelerator.
But unlike Kobayashi’s problem before, de Vries’s problem did not go away. On the contrary, the stuttering increased and de Vries had to press the “Driver Default” button more and more often. The lap times dropped by three to five seconds, but in other laps the pace was normal.
But that cost de Vries more than half a minute and he dropped back to sixth place. At the pit stop after five hours, things got even worse: at the time of reporting, the Toyota had fallen back to tenth place, and the trend was downward.
Steering side, not the sensor on the transmission side WEC 8HBahrain https://t.co/c2ynf24GjU pic.twitter.com/Aj2FkIlwxP
— すめらぎ – Sumeragi (@0mrg) November 2, 2024
Now, the only thing that can help the Toyota – besides a miracle recovery – is a safety car period. When the car is healthy, the Toyota 8 Toyota (Buemi/Hartley/Hirakawa) is struggling with brake problems and is only in fifth place.
