The #7 Toyota TR010 Hybrid that won the 2026 Le Mans 24 Hours was compromised by a sensor problem that left it as much as 8km/h down on power.
Kamui Kobayashi, Mike Conway and Nyck de Vries took top honours in the 94th edition of the French endurance classic, driving the heavily-updated TR010 to the victory lane ahead of the #20 BMW M Hybrid V8 shared by Robin Frijns, Rene Rast and Sheldon van der Linde to victory.
However, Toyota’s technical director David Floury revealed post-race that the winning car was nursing an intermittent problem that forced it to go to ‘safe mode’, compromising its top speed at a track where straightline performance plays a major role.
According to Floury, the issue first appeared on Saturday night and couldn’t be completely resolved, putting the #7 Toyota at a relative disadvantage to its sister car, which led the first half of the race and ultimately finished third.
“The sensor was not gone completely, but it was drifting and noisy,” Floury explained. “Then, it messed up all the FIA measurements, so we had to, at some stage, go to default mode, and then the sensor came back. But even when the sensor was back, we were triggering a lot of illegals, so we had to reduce the power.”
Asked how much power the #7 Toyota was losing, he replied: “I don't know how much power or not, but at some periods of the race, we had like a 6km/h-to-8km/h difference between the two cars, so it was that big.
“Luckily, the sensor decided to partially come back. Then analysing the data, we identified some patterns that were triggering it to go to default, so we briefed the driver to not go into these specific conditions.
“We managed to survive with a decent power for the remainder of the race.”
Pressed further if the #7 Toyota was still losing time in the final stages of the race, where it moved ahead of the sister car en route to victory, He said: “It was a bit up and down.
“So, there were some periods of the race where we were running normally, and some periods where we weren't running normally.”
Floury added that the #7 Toyota was at risk of dropping out of the lead lap early in the race due to tyre troubles.
The Japanese marque’s two LMH cars qualified 14th and 11th, but while the #8 car vaulted to the lead by pitting early and taking on less fuel, the #8 Toyota could only climb to the middle of the top 10.
“The first thing on car #7 is that we had a slow puncture at the start of the stint. Very early in the race, yeah, in the first three hours.
“And this happened very early in the stint, and we were already upset, so this put us at risk in case of a safety car. So, we were already at risk of losing a full lap. So, this was not a very good start, and after that, around 2100 yesterday, we had an FIA sensor issue.”
The #7 Toyota took the lead at the final FCY intervention in hour 11, where de Vries surged ahead despite making an emergency stop under caution and pitting again for full service.
