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Interlagos was an interesting race. While Toyota had a clear and inarguable pace advantage, it was quite close behind them, with Ferrari and Porsche being evenly matched in a 'best of the rest' battle.
Much like for other races this year, TRL has crunched the numbers to find each car's top 20% lap times. We've then averaged them out to find each's team average pace.
Toyota on top
Toyota were, quite clearly, on top at Interlagos. The #7 Toyota had the best average pace, with an advantage of over two tenths compared to the team car. This is perhaps understandable when you consider that the #7 Toyota was delayed by three minutes in the pits to fix a malfunctioning control unit, part of the car's fuel system.
Before that, Mike Conway had created a large gap in the first two hours, almost 20 seconds over whoever was chasing (it fluctuated due to off-strategy pitstops), by the time he stopped for the third time to hand over to Nyck de Vries.
That stop, though, dropped the former leader back to 18th, now with de Vries on board. A recovery drive was needed to salvage anything from a race the #7 car looked odds-on to win.
And they did just that, with de Vries up to fifth by the time he stopped, with an hour and 40 minutes remaining, to be replaced by Kamui Kobayashi. That position is likely inflated a little by pitstop strategy — when Kobayashi exited the pits he had dropped out of the top 10 and down to around 13th — but even so, the progress and pace advantage Toyota had was evident, on both cars. They'd eventually finish fourth, just off the podium.
The other car led the remainder of the race, apart from a few brief periods where pitstops played a part, and ended up with a gap of over a minute to the second-placed #6 Porsche by the end of the race.
Porsche were, in the main, Toyota's key challengers in the race. The analysis shows they were, at worst, six or seven tenths off the pace, and at best, three to four tenths. In a lap that's only around 87 or 88 seconds long, that's quite a gap to be losing, on average, every single lap.
This could have been down to a few reasons. Toyota have raced at Interlagos in WEC before, in 2012-2013-2014 with the TS030 and TS040. The data they had from that was likely very useful and gave them a headstart in car setup when it came to simulation and real-world preparation.
Porsche raced at Interlagos in 2014 too, but it wasn't the current Porsche team that raced at Interlagos; whereas back then the Porsche 919 was an in-house factory programme, the current 963 programme is run, on the factory's behalf, by Penske. Penske are an extremely good team, and Porsche's existing data likely would have helped, but not to the extent Toyota's did.
The same goes with Ferrari — they raced here in 2012-2014, but with a GT car, not a prototype. So while a little bit of data may have been transferable, it's likely they were starting mostly from scratch.
Another reason for Toyota's supremacy at Interlagos may be one we don't want to talk about: Balance of Performance. Toyota are currently one of the heaviest and least powerful cars on the grid, but as with last year, they've still raced the GR010 for much longer than every other car on the grid.
While the BoP is designed to balance out the performance of the cars, it still acts at least partially on a 'potential' basis, although not to the extent it did in 2023.
The other question surrounding BoP is: did Toyota sandbag in the first three races of the year, in order to gain a favourable BoP for Le Mans? Winning Le Mans was a big internal aim for Toyota this year and it's possible they sacrificed Qatar, Imola and Spa to win the French endurance classic. It's a hard question to answer — and the team will never, ever say or admit to it — but one TRL is actively investigating.
Ferrari, meanwhile, were a little further off Toyota compared to Porsche. They just didn't have the pace to truly fight, and while they did sit in third for quite a while with the #51, eventually the Porsches, and the recovering #7 Toyota, were able to overcome them. The wait for a non-Le Mans WEC win for the Italian manufacturer continues (although I'm sure they'd take the Le Mans wins every single time...).
The midfield battle continues
Behind the top 3, there's a great battle in the midfield between Alpine, Cadillac, BMW, Lamborghini, and Peugeot.
The upper midfield
Let's start with Cadillac. They ran in the top 5 for the first part of the race, and looked like a decent result was coming their way at last. Hoorah! But then Cadillac's typical 2024 misfortune struck, with Alex Lynn reporting a 'grinding noise' from the brakes.
"We unfortunately had a problem on the pit stop where we had to come back in and reseat the right-front wheel and that took us out of contention for a good result today," said the Briton.
"That’s the margins in WEC. Any small error will cost you dearly, and unfortunately that was us today. I think we had a solid race, a solid car and good performance."
After that Cadillac languished way out of the top 10 and eventually finished 13th.
Alpine, on the other hand, are most likely happy with the #36 car taking 10th. It wasn't perfect — both BMW and Peugeot finished ahead of them — but points are points. Plus, the #36 car's average pace was significantly better than what BMW or Peugeot could manage, almost 3 tenths up on both of them.
The other Alpine, the #35 machine, didn't fare as well. While only 12th, Paul-Loup Chatin, Ferdinand Habsburg and Charles Milesi were nearing half a second a lap on average off the pace of the #36 car, which is crewed by Mick Schumacher, Nicolas Lapierre, and Matthieu Vaxiviere.
The latter three were faster on average than their rivals, with only the Toyotas, Porsches, and Ferraris faster. That's good progress for the French manufacturer and bodes well for future performance into 2025.
While a ninth-placed finish for BMW seems good on the surface, their average pace was somewhat lacking, at least compared to Alpine and Cadillac. Getting a car into Hyperpole was an achievement, but with both cars around three tenths off their main rivals, there is clearly more work needed from the German manufacturer and WRT, the famed Belgian team running the cars on the factory's behalf.
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The lower midfield
Peugeot finished eighth at Interlagos, the team's joint-best result of the year. This seems like good progress from the team, who as we know introduced a brand new car earlier in the year. That means they're effectively starting from scratch, and should be considered as such.
That said, while the finishing position for Mikkel Jensen, Nico Muller, and Jean-Eric Vergne seems like they're moving forwards, the average pace tells a different story.
They were the second and fourth-slowest cars on average at Interlagos, according to the numbers crunched by TRL, slower than the BMWs, #63 Lamborghini, the #35 Alpine, and ultimately were only quicker than Isotta when both averages are combined.
Lamborghini, meanwhile, were in the mix with BMW and ahead of both Peugeots and the #35 Alpine - but struggled to convert this into a competitive position, only finishing ahead of the delayed #12 JOTA and the #11 Isotta, which retired with irrepairable engine issues.
Isotta Fraschini
Isotta Fraschini, this year's plucky underdog in WEC terms, didn't finish at Interlagos due to engine issues which sidelined them just before the four hour mark. Prior to this they seemed to be racing relatively well; at one point early in the race, they were in the mid teens, ahead of the competition, with Jean-Karl Vernay in the car.
However, they dropped back after this and when Carl Bennett climbed in, fell back even further. It's clear more work is needed not just on the car, but upskilling the drivers, even though progress is being made.
