Pascal Vasselon, Toyota Gazoo Racing Europe technical director, explained that the Japanese driver who shared the second-placed GR010 HYBRID Le Mans Hypercar with Sebastien Buemi and Brendon Hartley was caught out by a rearward brake balance setting at the tight Arnage right-hander.
This had not been communicated to Hirakawa when he took over from Hartley for the run to the chequered flag and attempted to close down a gap of approximately 15s to the winning Ferrari 499P LMH driven by Antonio Giovinazzi, James Calado and Alessandro Pier Guidi.
“The brake balance on that corner was really rearward,” said Vasselon.
“The drivers manipulate the brake balance they want corner by corner during their runs and Brendon gave Ryo a few indications of what he had done [at the driver change], but this one was missed.
“The information did not pass to him 100% in the few moments [at the pitstop] to be careful at this corner.”
Hirakawa lost the car under braking for Arnage three laps after taking over the car early in the penultimate hour of last month’s centenary running of the Le Mans enduro.
He hit the barrier front and rear on the entry to the corner, the resulting in two minutes lost to body repairs in the pits.
Speaking about the spin, Hirakawa said: “The mistake at Le Mans was painful, but we’ve been investigating, and we found a small thing, so actually I have more confidence in myself now.”
The time loss effectively drew a line under Toyota’s bid for a sixth consecutive victory at the blue riband round of the World Endurance Championship.
Source: Autosport