TOYOTA FINALLY BEATS LE MANS – AND NOT ITSELF
There was no factory opposition, but Toyota’s TS050 HYBRIDS set a blistering pace as Fernando Alonso, Kazuki Nakajima and Sebastien Buemi ended one of racing’s most famous jinxes
Toyota finally buried its Le Mans 24 Hours jinx and did so in style on a day when it allowed its two TS050 HYBRIDS to race – and race hard. The Japanese manufacturer’s cars put on a show last weekend as they ran without fault through the contest, and the easy conclusion to reach was that Fernando Alonso stole that show on the way to victory together with Sebastien Buemi and Kazuki Nakajima.
The two-time Formula 1 world champion hauled back the better part of a two-minute deficit to the leading Toyota during a stirring quadruple stint in the small hours of Sunday morning, putting it on a footing to move into the lead later. Yet it would be too simplistic to conclude that the Le Mans rookie was the difference between the two crews in the second round of the 2018-19 World Endurance Championship superseason.
Alonso climbed aboard the #8 Toyota for the second time in the race shortly before 1.30am on Sunday. Team-mate Mike Conway was more than two minutes up the road in the #7 Toyota, and Alonso quickly started to make up some of the lost ground. But by the time he climbed out after four stints, he was a shade under 40 seconds behind Jose Maria Lopez.
Alonso’s stint of a few minutes more than two and a half hours in the small hours was a decisive period of the race, but it wasn’t only the result of his phenomenal talents and a no-stoneunturned approach to his preparations for the French enduro and the unique challenge of the 8.47-mile Circuit de la Sarthe.
The balance between the two Toyota TS050 HYBRIDS changed over the course of the race, and in the cool of the night Alonso’s mount had a clear advantage over the #7 car in which Kamui Kobayashi joined Conway and Lopez. Alonso talked about how he “found a good rhythm” during his quadruple stint during the night, a stint he wanted to extend – he asked over the radio if he could stay in the car to turn it into a quintuple.
The reality was that Alonso now had a car in which it was easier to get to the maximum performance than the sister
Toyota in those cooler conditions. “When the temperatures dropped at night, we kind of lacked a lot of front end with the car,” explained Conway. “All through the night we dropped pace compared with the other car. That was the kind of turning point, even though the hotter conditions when the sun came up brought us back into the window.”
Conway, Kobayashi and Lopez had struggled with set-up through race week and eventually decided to go down the same path as their opposite numbers in #8. Lopez reckoned that their team-mates still had the “better base” come race day.
Nakajima and then Buemi also got more out of #8 than the drivers in #7 when they cycled through the car after Alonso. The Japanese driver continued to make inroads into the diminishing advantage held by Lopez, and was within sight when he stopped for the first time in his own night-time quadruple.
Kobayashi, now with the benefit of a fresh set of Michelins, was briefly able to stabilise the position of the #7 car at the head of the field after taking over from Lopez. Midway through hour 16, however, Nakajima eased past at Mulsanne Corner as his fellow countryman gave him plenty of room.
Buemi continued to build the lead early in his stint with some stunning laps – as well as a bit of luck with a slow zone – before the gap started to stabilise again as the temperatures rose.
The two Toyotas had been evenly matched for the opening hour and swapped positions multiple times in the ebb and flow of the race, until the #7 got its break at the end of the eighth hour and early in the ninth. A slender advantage became a 40s lead when Buemi lost time through the vagaries of the slow-zone system. It turned out to be a double whammy for the Swiss driver, who was penalised with a one-minute stop-go for exceeding the 80km/h speed limit in the controlled area.
The deficit eventually ran to two minutes, but the #8 Toyota had the pace during those epic nocturnal stints to claw it back, and then #7 didn’t really have anything for the leaders as the race drew to a close. The race appeared to be over, even before Lopez lost time with a quick spin in the 21st hour.
Kobayashi revealed after the race that he and his team-mates had given up the fight in the closing hours and were concentrating on bringing their car home in second position. This explained, he said, a bizarre mistake with 90 or so minutes to go when he failed to come into the pits for a scheduled stop and had to complete
“Over a spread of times we’re nowhere near the Toyotas”
REBELLION’S NEEL JANI
much of the next lap using electrical power from the car’s hybrid system. “We should have stopped after 11 laps, but I didn’t box
– I just forgot, that’s it,” he explained. “For us the race was gone, so we decided not to take risks, not to be aggressive. I slowed down and that is why I lost concentration.”
The #7 Toyota received two penalties, each a 10s stop-go, for the additional lap. One was for exceeding the maximum stint length under green-flag conditions of 11 laps, and the other for using more than the maximum amount of fuel over a stint.
That meant the gap between the two Toyotas went out to more than a lap for the first time of the race. The #7 TS050 ended up classified two laps down on the winning car because Kobayashi had to line up behind Nakajima for a formation finish ahead of the chequered flag.
There was, predictably, no race with the privateers at Le Mans, just as there hadn’t been at the 2018-19 WEC opener at Spa in May. The closest that one of the non-hybrids came to the Toyotas was into the Dunlop Chicane on the opening lap, when the nosecone of Andre Lotterer’s Rebellion touched the rear end of the #8 car, though only because it was in the process of parting company with the rest of the car at the time.
A lap into the 24 Hours, the leading Toyota was nearly three seconds up on the best of the Rebellion-gibson R-13s. And by the first round of pitstops, that margin was nigh on 20s.
The TS050S held a one-lap advantage over the chasing pack as early as the third hour.
However quick the best of the independents were over one clear racing lap – Neel Jani was less than two and a half seconds slower than Buemi’s fastest lap of the race – they couldn’t lap as consistently quickly as the TS050S. The benefits of having a 400bhp kick on tap from their twin-hybrid systems resulted in a massive advantage for the Toyotas in traffic.
“We’re not too bad over one lap, but on a spread of times we are nowhere near the Toyotas,” said Jani, who lined up in the #1 Rebellion with Lotterer and Bruno Senna. “We can lose 10s or 12s a lap if we are unlucky with traffic.”
The quickest of the privateers, the Rebellions and SMP Racing’s BR Engineering BR1S powered by the AER V6 turbo engine, were never going to be in a position to benefit from any Toyota hiccups even if they had run reliably. And they didn’t.
The Rebellions ran through to the finish to third and fourth positions, but they were a long way back after 24 hours of racing. The third-placed R-13, shared by Thomas Laurent, Gustavo Menezes and Mathias Beche, was 12 laps down at the chequered flag, the car Lotterer shared with Jani and Senna 13.
Along the way, the R-13 designed and built by ORECA suffered a series of niggles that you may expect of a car that didn’t run for the first time until the start of April. There were issues underneath both cars – a loose floor on #1 and loose plank on #3 – in addition to clutch issues, while the Lotterer/jani/ Senna Rebellion had a problem with one of its doors at the finish to go with the loose nose that it had at the start.
It was this problem that decided the internecine battle between the Swiss entrant’s two cars in favour of Laurent, Menezes and Beche in #3. That explained why the team opted to leave Jani
Hour 13 0300-0400
Lopez was helped as a disrupted hour ended with a slow zone, just after Alonso had taken five seconds out of his lead. It grew back to around two minutes, with Alonso on a quadruple stint and radioing the team to ask about a fifth.
Hour 14 0400-0500
Nakajima carried on where Alonso left off and brought the lead gap to around 10s. Rebellion Racing swapped positions when a technical problem forced Neel Jani into the pits for almost 10 minutes and allowed Gustavo Menezes to go third.
Hour 15 0500-0600
Kobayashi ended the #8 Toyota’s run of gaining on the leader as he stabilised the lead to around 10 seconds. LMP2 continued to be controlled by G-drive, which held a one-lap advantage. The #92 Porsche’s GT lead grew ever bigger.
Hour 16 0600-0700
As light returned, it was the #8 Toyota that was finally back in front after a clean move on the Mulsanne executed by Nakajima on Kobayashi. Buemi took over #8 and built a gap of over 30s in the pits during a slow zone.