Mike Conway reckons that he and the rest of Toyota’s #7 crew needs a good result in the Six Hours of Monza to stay in the title fight for the Hypercar world championship.
Conway, along with team-mates Jose Maria Lopez and Kamui Kobayashi currently trail the sister #8 Toyota by twenty points after it won the first two rounds of the FIA World Endurance Championship in Spa and Portimao.
The Briton, who last won a WEC race at the 2020 season finale in Bahrain, told MotorsportWeek.com ahead of this weekend’s event that the team needs to continue to execute well in the hopes of closing the gap to the sister car.
“Of course,” Conway replied if closing the points gap was a goal for the weekend. “I mean, all we can try and do is keep doing what we’re doing, really. We don’t aim to finish second. So it’s a case of just execute well, try and win here, double points at Le Mans, so yeah. It’s all we can do.”
Conway went on to state that a win on Sunday would be preferable, as the deficit has grown even further as result of the extra points that were on offer for the previous round at Portimao.
“I’d be nice, yeah, for sure. We don’t want to fall too far behind. Obviously, the gap is decent now, with more points allowed at Portimao for the eight hours. So yeah, we need to start thinking ahead for sure, if we want to win the championship.”
The Japanese squad will have more rivals on the grid this Sunday, to further complicate things. Glickenhaus, which debuted with a single car in Portugal, has expanded to a two-car effort, with a pair of its 007 LMHs on the grid.
Conway is happy to have more cars on the grid, but admits he finds it difficult to estimate where the American cars will be compared to the pair of GR010 Hybrids.
“Two cars, which is good, more cars on the grid,” he said. “But yeah, hard to say The top speed looked similar to us at Portimao. I think they tested here before, that will help them I’m sure. I expect them to be closer. But obviously, they were struggling a bit at Portimao, so it’s hard to say really on where they’ll be.”
The 2019/20 world champion has one advantage heading into the weekend at Monza, given the fact that he previously took part in the WEC Prologue in 2017, back when he was a part of Toyota’s LMP1 squad.
“Obviously, all circuit knowledge is going to help, but we’ll still approach it as a new car, learn as much as we can throughout the sessions to get it dialed in for the race, really,” he concluded. “I look forward to get back on track, it’s fun here. A lot to learn with the competition as well, see how they are, but for mainly for us, to get the car dialed in is the main thing.
