Toyota won the 6 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps 2019 at Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps. The #8 Toyota TS050 Hybrid of Toyota Gazoo Racing covered 133 laps over 5h 45m, a race distance of 932 km. The winning crew: Sébastien Buemi, Kazuki Nakajima and Fernando Alonso. The margin to second place was 1 lap — a clear, controlled win. The fastest manufacturer also produced the winner.
The race did not go the full distance: the flag came out after 5h 45m instead of the scheduled 6 hours. Distance and average speed below reflect that shortened race.
How the Lead Was Won
Across the race we counted 2 lead changes among 2 different cars in the LMP1 class. At the closest point, first and second were only 6.6 s apart. For 1 of 2 measured hours the gap stayed under 30 seconds.
The leader was never fully out of reach, but the pressure came in waves rather than all race long.
Manufacturer Pace
We rank pace by the average of each manufacturer’s fastest lap. That measures real speed over the distance instead of one lucky lap. The order at the top: Toyota (214.2 km/h), BR Engineering (211.8 km/h), Rebellion (211.8 km/h).
Between the fastest and the slowest manufacturer in the LMP1 class lie 11.8 km/h. That is a wide spread. At this track, the concept differences show clearly.
Figure 1 sets the pace order side by side.
Reliability by Class
All 34 cars were classified at the flag. A race without a single retirement is rare and says a lot about how it was run.
Reliability decided nothing here, so the result came down to pace and strategy alone.
Figure 2 compares the classes directly.
Efficiency Over the Distance
Our efficiency score multiplies average lap speed by laps completed and compares that to the class average. It rewards cars that were fast and stayed out of trouble. A value of 1.000 is exactly class average.
The top score goes to #8 Toyota with 1.066. That is the winning car — speed and durability came from the same package.
Figure 3 ranks the cars by that score.
The Closing Phase
In the final hour, 82% of the field held position within ±1 place (n = 34). Most of the order was set, but a few fights ran to the end. The biggest single move came from #81 BMW, 6 places back.
Figure 4 shows how settled the finish really was.
Fastest Lap and Class Gaps
The fastest single lap of the race belongs to #7 Toyota (Toyota Gazoo Racing): 1:57.394 at 214.8 km/h. Crew: Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi and Jose Maria Lopez.
Between LMP1 and LMP2 sits a pace gap of 5.5 s per lap. That number decides how much traffic the leaders have to work through.
Class winners — LMP1: #8 Toyota (Toyota Gazoo Racing), LMP2: #31 Oreca (DragonSpeed), LMGTE Pro: #97 Aston Martin (Aston Martin Racing), LMGTE Am: #77 Porsche (Dempsey - Proton Racing).
Putting the Race in Context
The winner averaged 162.1 km/h across 932 km. On a 7.004 km lap, that is the pace the whole strategy had to sustain.
We calculate the same metrics for every race in the archive: pace order, reliability by class, lead changes, winning margin, closing stability and efficiency. That makes this race directly comparable with every other round of the 2018-2019 season — and with the seasons before it.
All figures are derived from the full classification of every race hour and are recalculated with each build.
