David Floury, technical director at Toyota Gazoo Racing Europe, made the claim after Kamui Kobayashi, Nyck de Vries and Mike Conway took victory in the Imola 6 Hours after Ferrari made two key strategic errors.
“I don’t think we should be over excited because it was a race decided on a tyre call, not on pure pace,” he said.
“If you look at pure pace on fastest lap time, Ferrari is four tenths faster than us.
“We won without being fastest, so it was won on strategy and team execution.”
He added that the lack of pace of the GR010 in comparison with Ferrari’s 499P LMH was “not something we are happy with”.
Floury paid tribute to Kobayashi’s drive over the final two hours to seal the victory when rain started to fall.
The Japanese driver, who is also team principal of the TGR WEC squad, had to go into extreme fuel-save mode over his final stint to avoid the need for a late splash-and-dash stop at the same time as fending off a challenge from the factory Porsche 963 LMDh with Kevin Estre at the wheel.
“When we started the final stint we were scratching our heads a bit, wondering how we were going to manage it,” explained Floury.
Source: Autosport