Damien Smith
Le Mans 24 Hours race dissected
❝ They can take enormous pride in building, developing, testing and racing an all-new car to fresh rules ❞
In the view of the uncharitable, Toyota has been shooting at an open goal at the Le Mans 24 Hours these past four years as it has notched up a string of consecutive victories after decades of falling short at the world’s greatest endurance motor race. There’s that nagging question: who did it beat, without big-beast opposition such as Audi or Porsche present at the Circuit de la Sarthe? The answer tends to be the gruelling race itself – and another Toyota. Thank goodness that a genuine, open rivalry has been allowed to ferment between the #7 and #8 crews. Without it, Le Mans would have been reduced to a red-and-white parade.
Again, the uncharitable say that’s what it is anyway, even if the Toyotas are free to race each other. But that’s unfair. It’s hardly Toyota’s fault that the others left the field of play, and in each of the past four years the Cologne-based Toyota Gazoo Racing team has still faced a daunting job to complete, with the added pressure that it was always expected to win. As the Mercedes-amg Formula 1 team will tell you, that’s an uncomfortable scenario. Success at the highest level is never easy and always hard-earned.
CONWAY SAVOURS HIS MOMENT
This year, Toyota picked up from where it left off during the high-tech LMP1 era by dominating the first Le Mans run to the new Hypercar rule book. What changed was the perennially unlucky #7 car – helmed by Britain’s Mike Conway, ex-formula 1 driver Kamui Kobayashi and Argentinian José María López – always held the upper hand. It was helped in no small part by Sébastien Buemi in the #8 being hit by the Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus car of Olivier Pla at the very first corner. The Swiss quickly recovered after a systems reset, and the onetwo result duly followed, but the pole-position-winning #7 never let its advantage slip.
Make no mistake, this was no classic Le Mans: the Toyotas were always out of reach of the ‘grandfathered’ and restricted LMP1 Alpine that finished third, while the non-hybrid Glickenhaus duo admirably ran reliably for a four-five finish but lacked the cutting edge to take on the mighty Japanese factory effort. That had always been a long shot.
But will Conway and co care about any of that? Of course not, and nor should they. Instead, they can take enormous pride in Toyota building, developing, testing and then racing an all-new car written to fresh regulations, plus overcoming a troubling fuel pick-up glitch and the typical Le Mans puncture setbacks, to score a landmark win.
“It was a hard race,” said Conway. “We knew that we had an issue on the car for the last six hours, and that could have been a really big problem, but the team came up with a solution to keep us going. All credit to them for the one-two. It’s really special in the circumstances.
“This race is never easy. Even if you’re out on your own at the front, anything can happen. We can enjoy it now, because a weight is lifted off us.”
Too right. Enjoy your moment, Mike. You, your team-mates and the whole Toyota crew deserve it.
The remarkable reliability of the five LMH runners blew clean out of the water my speculation that an LMP2 car might end up scoring a shock win at Le Mans this year. But the second-rung
class did deliver a race climax that will never be forgotten.
How the Belgian WRT team – best known for its exploits in GT3 sports cars – ran one-two for much of the race on its Le Mans debut was already a talking point before a heartbreaking last lap turned the result on its head. The team’s #41 entry was all set for a deserved victory when driver Yifei Ye stopped out on track with an apparent electric gremlin. That was hard to swallow for a crew that included the mercurial Robert Kubica, who understands better than anyone how cruel motorsport can be given how his highly promising F1 career was destroyed by a rally crash in 2011 that almost cost him his right arm.
At least for WRT, Robin Frijns was able to pick up the pieces in the #31 entry – but even then the Formula E racer had his work cut out, because Tom Blomqvist (son of rally legend Stig) was bearing down in the #28 Jota entry. As the Toyotas led the field on the traditional last-lap ceremonial tour to the finish, these two weaved in and out of the traffic, still racing hard for the class win.
How Frijns missed the man waving the chequered flag after darting out from behind the Toyotas at the line was pure dumb luck. This year’s Le Mans narrowly avoided an unspeakable tragedy in its final seconds.
HUFF’S LUCK PUFFS AWAY
Over in Hungary, Britain’s Rob Huff was also enduring the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune in the World Touring Car Cup. The 41-year-old has gone through a troubled return to the series this year, qualifying no better than 15th in the previous three rounds in his Zengö Motorsport-run Cupra Leon. Yet here he was, unencumbered by success ballast, beating the Hungaroring WTCR qualifying lap record and landing a shock pole in the shootout at his team’s home track. The crowd went wild.
It was a shame therefore that he clipped a tyre stack and smashed his front-left suspension in the reversedgrid first race, leaving Zengö with too much work for him to take his pole for race two.
“I put my hands up to it: I made a mistake,” said the 2012 champion. “I was cruising, and then I just caught the tyre stack. We needed another 15 seconds of repair time to make the grid.” As it was, he started from the pit lane and finished 18th. That’s motorsport.