Toyota Gazoo Racing entered the 6 Hours of Imola knowing its TR010 Hybrid was not the quickest Hypercar in the field. By the time the chequered flag fell at the Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferrari on Easter Sunday, the Japanese manufacturer had beaten Ferrari on home soil anyway — and the inside story of how it happened is a case study in strategic discipline and perfect race execution.
David Floury, Toyota's technical director, was refreshingly honest about the performance gap in the wake of the victory. In the hours after Brendon Hartley and Ryo Hirakawa celebrated the marque's 100th WEC start with an emotional win, Floury made clear that Toyota did not win Sunday's race because it had the faster car.
"It was not won on pure pace, it was made by making no mistakes and executing to a high level," Floury said.
The second part of his explanation pointed at Imola itself as the critical variable. Toyota's engineers knew the circuit's narrow racing line would allow a slower car to defend at length if track position could be won and protected — a phenomenon the team had witnessed first-hand in 2025.
"We know on this track it is almost impossible to overtake," Floury said. "We saw here last year, Seb keeping a Ferrari behind for a whole stint while being significantly slower, so we went for an aggressive strategy."
That aggressive strategy had two layers. The first was an earlier-than-expected pit stop sequence that undercut Ferrari's lead Hypercars and inverted track position at a moment when the field was still consolidating. The second was rigorous tyre management — protecting rubber that had been pressed hard in the opening stint and needed to hold up once Toyota emerged in front.
On the other side of the pit lane, Ferrari's management did not contest the verdict. Team and track operations manager Giuliano Salvi acknowledged, without equivocation, that Toyota had been the better executed operation on the day — and that the result did not reflect the raw performance order of the grid.
"Toyota looked better than us," Salvi said. "I think Toyota is the leading car at the moment — there is no doubt."
"We thought from the start Toyota would be a very difficult competitor. We were pushing, but they were slightly quicker in the end."
Salvi's phrasing was careful — 'slightly quicker in the end' — because Ferrari's own stopwatch suggested its 499P was the faster car across a clean stint. The problem was that Toyota's early strategic commitment denied Ferrari the window it needed.
"There was a certain kind of gambling," Salvi said of Toyota's call. "It was the correct choice when you are behind and it made their day — there was nothing for us to do afterwards."
Even a late-race Safety Car did not reset the margin.
"That one at the end didn't change anything," Salvi said. "It would have been closer, but I think they had the margin to keep us at bay."
For Ferrari, the sting was concentrated by the venue. The team arrived at the circuit named after its founder — and its founder's son — with a genuine expectation of winning at home. Salvi did not hide it.
"We wanted this win with all our will," he said. "We are at our home circuit, named after our founder and his son."
For Hartley, the winning driver, the celebration was built on the same theme: faith in the strategy call, trust in the pit crew, and flawless delivery across the full six hours. Hirakawa, sharing the winning car, summed it up crisply on the podium — "we got a new car, it's our 100th race, and we made history!" — before the Japanese team turned its attention to Spa-Francorchamps.
The 6 Hours of Spa is next on the WEC calendar, and the balance of power between Toyota and Ferrari now has a provisional answer. If Ferrari genuinely has the faster Hypercar, the Belgian round will show it. If Toyota can continue to out-execute on strategy, the 2026 Hypercar title will become a lesson in discipline rather than raw pace.
---
*Originally published on [Motorsports Global](https://motorsports.global/article/no-mistakes-beats-pure-pace-how-toyota-stole-wec-imola-from-ferrari). Visit for full coverage.*