Mike Conway and his Toyota teammates were robbed of a certain victory in the FIA World Endurance Championship at the weekend.

The team were likely to win the 6 hours of Spa but for Mechanical issues to cost them their chance at victory at one of the worlds most iconic racetracks.

The team, which started the race as manufacturers’ World Championship leaders, led comfortably after four hours and looked set to take victory in the WEC 6 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps, its first since 2014. The TS050 hybrid engines had demonstrated significantly improved performance prior to the mechanical issues.

An early incident with a lapped car required the #6 car, driven by Conway and team mates Stéphane Sarrazin and Kamui Kobayashi, to pit for repairs. A later electronics failure unfortunately damaged the engine, leaving the team with no choice but to retire the car after 87 laps and 6 pit stops.

Speaking after the weekend, Conway said: “That was tough. I made a mistake, touching an LMP2 car and that damaged our race. After that we were pushing as much as we could and got up into the podium places. We had a good strategy and things were working out. We could have had two podium finishes today but it wasn’t to be.”

Toshio Sato, Team President, added: “We saw positive signs in terms of performance but the end result is very hard to take. Thanks to the great effort from the team in Cologne and Higashi-Fuji, we showed a clear improvement compared to Silverstone. We consistently set very strong lap times and were able to lead the race until the last two hours. But unfortunately we experienced damaged engines on both cars. Now we will urgently address what has happened and find counter-measures before Le Mans.”

Conway’s next WEC race is the Le Mans 24 Hours on 18 June, when 250,000 spectators will witness the 84th edition of the world’s most famous endurance race. Prior to that, the official test day at Circuit de la Sarthe takes place on 5 June.

Images courtesy of www.psp-images.co.uk