The 89th edition of the 24 Hours of Le Mans race saw a fierce battle between Ferrari and Toyota for the overall win. The #51 Ferrari 499P, driven by Antonio Giovinazzi and Alessandro Pier Guidi, had a one-minute lead over the #8 Toyota GR010 Hybrid, driven by Sebastien Buemi, but a pitstop mishap cost them their advantage. The Ferrari failed to get away immediately after the pit stop, requiring a power cycle to get going again. Buemi took advantage of this and closed in on Pier Guidi, getting within a second of the Ferrari driver at one stage before the Italian widened the gap again. The two cars were then circulating around 20 seconds apart.
Toyota mixed up its strategy by bringing in Brendon Hartley, who took over from Buemi, earlier than the pit schedule. Hartley went out with fuel only, while Ferrari brought Pier Guidi in the following lap, with James Calado taking over at the wheel. Calado came under pressure from Hartley as he headed back out on the circuit, and the gap between the two leaders shrank to as little as 1.4 seconds with four hours to go. However, Calado started to stretch his legs at the head of the field again, and at the 21-hour mark, he was 14 seconds ahead of Hartley.
Other Class Leaders and Retirements
The #2 Cadillac V-Series.R was the only one of the American marque’s cars to have enjoyed a clean run up to the 20th hour, but it dropped off the lead lap. The #93 Peugeot 9X8 was fifth, four laps down, after taking a nose change as its last pitstop, while the best of the Porsche 963s, the #5 machine, was running sixth ahead of the delayed #50 Ferrari. The #94 Peugeot had just been wheeled into the garage as the clock struck 1 pm local time, while the #6 Porsche suffered further lengthy visits to the pits to replace the hybrid battery.
In the LMP2 class, Inter Europol Competition continued to lead, but with a much-reduced gap as the Polish squad was hit with a drive-through penalty for overtaking under the safety car. Albert Costa had the distinctive yellow-and-green ORECA around 18 seconds ahead of the #41 WRT machine of Robert Kubica. Third in class was the IDEC Sport machine with pole-winner Paul-Loup Chatin at the wheel, followed by Neel Jani in the Duqueine car.
In GTE Am, Corvette Racing took the lead in the hands of silver-rated driver Nico Varrone. The solo C8.R in the field was running some 20 seconds clear of its nearest challenger, the Iron Dames Porsche of Sarah Bovy, with the ORT by TF Aston Martin and the ‘Rexy’-liveried Project 1 Porsche still in the hunt. Michael Fassbender (Proton Porsche) and Daniel Serra (Kessel Ferrari) suffered race-ending crashes at the Porsche Curves and Indianapolis, respectively, resulting in two retirements in class. The Garage 56 NASCAR Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 dropped to the bottom of the leaderboard as it spent time in the pits having its gearbox replaced.
The 24 Hours of Le Mans saw Ferrari and Toyota battling for the overall win. The #51 Ferrari 499P initially had a one-minute lead over the #8 Toyota GR010 Hybrid, but a pitstop mishap cost them their advantage. Toyota mixed up its strategy by bringing in Hartley earlier than the pit schedule, while Ferrari brought Pier Guidi in the following lap. Calado came under pressure from Hartley, but he managed to widen the gap again and won the race. Other class leaders were Inter Europol Competition in the LMP2 class and Corvette Racing in GTE Am. There were two retirements in class and one in the Garage 56 NASCAR Chevrolet Camaro ZL1.
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