Toyota driver Mike Conway has conceded that there are “still a few unknowns” ahead of his return to the cockpit at this weekend’s Interlagos World Endurance Championship round.
The Briton stressed that only after his first laps in opening free practice on Friday morning ahead of the Sao Paolo 6 Hours will he have the final validation of his fitness as he recovers from the injuries that ruled him out of last month’s Le Mans 24 Hours.
“I’ve ticked a lot of the boxes and the next one is sitting in the car — obviously it is still an unknown,” he said.
“It feels alright doing the driver changes, even when they drop the car. I feel good and I’m hopeful.”
Conway broke his right collarbone, which required surgery, and fractured two ribs in a cycling accident three days ahead of the Le Mans Test Day in June.
His recovery schedule precluded him getting some laps in a racing car ahead of his return to the line-up of the #7 Toyota GR010 HYBRID Le Mans Hypercar alongside Kamui Kobayashi and Nyck de Vries.
“I didn’t really want to: with the scheduled we had — and it was a tight schedule to get back in — I didn’t want to set myself back by getting in something too early,” he explained.
Conway has been in the Toyota simulator before and after the confirmation that he would be in the car for Interlagos last Friday.
#7 Toyota Gazoo Racing Toyota GR010 — Hybrid: Mike Conway
Photo by: Toyota
He revealed that he still felt pain “here and there” and is still “a bit still a bit stiff in the mornings”.
He also explained that the anticlockwise Autodromo Jose Carlos Pace will put more stress on his injured shoulder than a conventional clockwise circuit.
“The right arm has got more work to do around here,” he explained.
“There are a lot of left-hand corners; it would have been nice to go to a track with more right-handers.”
Should Conway encounter problems that prevent him from racing this weekend, the #7 Toyota would go into Sunday’s six-hour event with a two-driver crew.
Ritomo Miyata, Toyota’s official reserve driver, is not present in Brazil.
Toyota Gazoo Racing Europe technical director David Floury explained that it was never the plan to bring Miyata into the line-up at one of the six-hour races in the event of the withdrawal of one of its regular crew.
Miyata was overlooked for the Le Mans double-points WEC round after Conway’s accident.
Toyota instead recalled Jose Maria Lopez, who has been replaced in the Japanese manufacturer’s Hypercar class squad by de Vries for this season.
The Argentinian driver moved over from Toyota sister marque Lexus’s WEC LMGT3 class representative, Auto Sport Promotion, with which he is contesting the full series in one of its pair of RC F GT3s.
Free practice for Sunday’s Sao Paolo 6 Hours, round five of the 2024 WEC, begins at 10:45 local time on Friday.