With Toyota development driver Ryo Hirakawa on Super GT duty at the Suzuka 1,000km this weekend, Toyota WEC ace Mike Conway has stepped in to fill his seat in the championship-leading, double-race-winning #46 TDS Racing Oreca-Nissan.
“It’s just a one-off, they knew from the start of the year that Ryo wouldn’t be available so they asked me to do this,” Conway explained in the garage on Sunday morning before the race. “It’s good to be here – I must’ve been to Ricard about 50 times for testing, but I’ve never raced here, so it’s going to be fun.”
Conway of course made his first foray into sportscar racing in an Oreca 03 – the ADR-Delta-run G-Drive car in the 2013 World Endurance Championship, which proved to be a springboard to his current role at Toyota. So how has LMP2 evolved in the interim? “It’s not quite the same car, I was maybe expecting a bit too much from it, but it’s a car you can really drive quite hard, so it’s fun,” Conway said.
“I just did about 20 laps of Magny-Cours to get a good feel for it, but it still took another 10 laps or so in free practice here to really get the best out of it. But it feels good; it’s quite different to the 03, but there are some similar characteristics. With LMP2s, you can brake pretty late and fire them into a corner, so it’s a nice car to drive.
“From the 03 to the 05 has been a good update – I think they found a second and a half or two seconds and it’s quite a well balanced car. The 03 used to be quite on the nose everywhere, quite pitch-sensitive, but this is a lot nicer. They’ve done a great job with it and for the next one to come [next season’s 07] I think they’re pretty excited with what they have, too.”
With Beche having qualified the car on pole on Saturday, Conway will be in the cockpit for the start at 2pm on Sunday “Matthias has made it easy for us really, so I’m looking forward to starting the car. There’s a lot of tyre degradation here, so it’s going to be an interesting race .There are a couple of tyre choices out there, so hopefully we’ll be on the right one. I think we look quite good on long runs anyway with what we’ve chosen.”
Things have been looking a little less rosy for Conway and Toyota in the WEC of late, with a disappointing performance at the Nurburgring not what the team needed after the heartbreak of the #5 car’s last-minute retirement from the lead of Le Mans.
“We’ve been testing since the Nurburgring to learn more about our high-downforce package and extract as much from that as we can,” Conway explained. “We found some gains and it’s going to be different in Mexico – we’re not sure what we’re going to find there and no-one’s been there before, obviously.
“But Audi and Porsche looked very strong at the Ring, they’ve both got good downforce in the car and look like they’re going to be strong for the next two races at least. After that, who knows really, we always go to each circuit not knowing how it’s going to be and it’ll probably be like that for the rest of the season. We should be good at the places we’ve always been good, though, like Fuji and Bahrain. It’s going to be a mixed bag but I think we have the chance to fight for podiums and hopefully wins, too.”
Elsewhere, Conway had been anticipating a second season of Formula E racing at the Venturi squad (above) alongside his Toyota WEC team-mate Stephane Sarrazin, but a new partnership with German automotive technology giant ZF came with a request for a German driver in the car, so Conway was dropped in favour of GT ace Maro Engel.
“That was a shame, I really enjoyed it and it was great to do that alongside the WEC programme,” Conway reflected. “I would’ve liked to continue, the second season in a category you always feel like you’re on top of things a lot more, but that’s racing. I’d still like to get back into Formula E, but at the moment all the seats are pretty much closed off, so if anything comes along during the season I’ll try to be there. For the moment, after this weekend, I’m just focusing on the Toyota WEC programme.”
