Toyota driver Sebastien Buemi believes his late-race clash with Kevin Estre’s Porsche at the Austin World Endurance Championship round “looked worse than it was”.
Buemi insisted that the camera angles of the incident on the Circuit of The Americas back straight when he moved over on the Frenchman to defend his position “made it look very different to how it felt in the car”, while admitting that he was at fault.
“When I started to move to the inside he was already too far alongside and a bit in my blind spot — I made my move too late,” Buemi told Autosport of an incident that resulted in him receiving a 30s stop-go penalty and two points on his licence.
The #8 Toyota GR010 HYBRID Le Mans Hypercar made contact with the factory Penske-run Porsche 963 LMDh at that point, but Buemi continued to move to his left.
That resulted in a second contact when Estre was almost completely off the track on the apron alongside the retaining wall.
“It looks very bad on my part, like I am aiming to have a crash, like I want to crash with him,” said Buemi.
“In the car it didn’t feel like that - I don’t want to crash with someone on purpose.”
Buemi also suggested that there may have been mitigating circumstances for the second contact, because the Toyota sustained a left-rear puncture at some point over the course of the incident.
“I don’t know when the puncture happened, but basically I was trying to keep it on the road,” he said.
“I don’t know how much that affected what happened.”
Buemi admitted that his robust defence of sixth position in the penultimate hour of the Lone Star Le Mans event race was influenced by the difficulties the Toyota drivers faced trying to overtake at Austin.
The Toyota was short-fuelled early in the penultimate hour to leapfrog ahead of the Porsche, which had already stopped and therefore was on tyres that were already up to temperature.
“I wasn’t looking forward to being overtaken on the out-lap because I didn’t want to spend 32 laps stuck behind him when I was pretty confident we were faster,” explained Buemi.
“The fact that you know that it is nearly impossible to pass pushes you sometimes to make sure you don’t lose a position.”
Buemi accepted blame for the incident and the penalties that followed, which combined with the time lost to the puncture dropped the car he shares with Brendon Hartley and Ryo Hirakawa to a non-scoring 15th place.
“I made a mistake, and when you make a mistake you have to accept that you may get a penalty,” he said.
But he suggested that there needs to be consistency in the policing of driving standards in the WEC.
He pointed to the incident in which he was hit from behind at the first corner at Fuji last year by Ferrari driver Miguel Molina.
“I was checking the start last year and it wasn’t even investigated,” he said.
“I would like a review of the consistency of the penalties in the WEC.”
Buemi said that he had already cleared the air with Estre after the race.
They communicated by text after the race and then met up by chance in a cafe the morning after the race.
“I accept that the first part was a misjudgement, but the bit that wasn’t good was the second move,” said Estre.
“I don’t think what he did was right, but at least he says the same thing.”
