After six hours of racing only 11.223secs separated the #7 Toyota TS030 HYBRID driven by Nicolas Lapierre, Alex Wurz and Kazuki Nakajima and the No.1 Audi R18 e-tron quattro of double 24 Hours of Le Mans victors André Lotterer, Marcel Fässler and Benoît Tréluyer.
In the end it was Kazuki Nakajima finishing the six hours in first place followed the No.1 Audi which could not overcome an earlier penalty for a collision with the Kazuki Nakajima. The penalty forced the Audi to the pits one more time than had been planned laying waste to Audi's one less stop then the Toyota strategy.
Nakajima drove the Toyota at the end taking the victory in front of 32,000 celebrating Japanese fans. Nakajima's win is the first by a Japanese driver in a FIA World Championship race since 1992 and marks the second win by TOYOTA Racing in their first season.
“What a day!" said Nakajima, "It is a great achievement and it was a team effort so many thanks to my team-mates and the team, who prepared a great car, as well as everybody at TOYOTA who prepared such an impressive hybrid system. We all achieved this together. To win a world championship race as a driver has been my aim for my whole career so it is a great day. The crowd was fantastic; it was great to see so many TOYOTA flags in the grandstands. I was so excited in the last few laps. I was getting the message from my engineer to push hard because I had to make a gap for our last pit stop, so it was quite challenging. I was pushing like crazy and finally we just made it.”
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