Ferrari AF Corse’s No. 51 499P Hypercar has won the Le Mans 24 Hours — the centenary edition of the event that was first run in 1923. In a race that had everything: incidents, sudden weather changes, surprise class leaders, mechanical dramas and countless on-track battles, Antonio Giovanazzi, James Calado and Alessandro Pier Guidi survived one of the most chaotic races at La Sarthe in recent memory to take a famous win in front of an enormous crowd of 325,000 people.
It was a race that lived up to wild expectations and saw most of the factory cars in the top class remain in contention for the first half of the race before it came down to a battle between Ferrari and Toyota on Sunday morning.
After a titanic scrap between the No. 51 and No. 8 Hypercars, the Prancing Horse claimed its 10th overall Le Mans win and its first since 1965 — an achievement all the more impressive given the young the age of the 499P program. In the car’s first Le Mans appearance, the No. 51 was fast and near-bulletproof, breaking Toyota’s unbeaten run to start the FIA WEC season by completing 342 laps of the circuit.
Racing went down to the wire, with the top two on the lead lap until the very end, as close as 16 seconds apart in the penultimate hour before a costly error from Ryo Hirakawa in the No. 8 at Arnage effectively ended Toyota’s chances. The pendulum kept swinging, with the Toyota’s chances of victory changing by the hour before Hirakawa was entrusted with chasing down the Ferrari in the final dash to the finish. The pit wall was urging him to catch and pass Giovanazzi, but the pressure got to the Japanese driver, who ended up in the barriers with damage to the front and rear of the car that required an emergency stop for repairs. In doing so, the car almost fell off the lead lap.
Giovanazzi was ebullient during the celebration.
“It’s just special. We ran the car less than a year ago for the first time. To be here is fantastic. We didn’t expect to survive for 24 hours, but the whole team did a fantastic job. We are all here… After 50 years, we are back and we need to be really proud,” he said.
The No. 8 GR010 HYBRID would eventually come home second, but the runner-up result will come as a colossal disappointment for Sebastien Buemi, Brendon Hartley, Hirakawa and the entire team, who headed into the race with the sole aim of scoring Toyota’s sixth consecutive overall win. Instead, they had to settle for a podium finish, crossing the line 1m21s behind the winning Ferrari, itself having a minor drama at its final stop, the car struggling to fire up.
“It was a tough one, just to remain on track,” Buemi said. “We were a bit too slow (and) we had to over-drive to keep up with them (Ferrari). They were faster than us. They had more pace. We did everything we could, but full credit to them, they have been very impressive. We have to come back stronger at Monza.”
Completing the podium was the No. 2 Cadillac Racing V-Series.R which had a metronomic run to the flag — a spin in the wet at Mulsanne Corner was the car’s only notable hiccup. A really promising performance from Richard Westbrook, Alex Lynn and Earl Bamber, scored Cadillac its first podium in WEC competition, the first LMDh car across the line.
“We knew coming in that we had to run our race. We had to run clean because we knew Ferrari and Toyota would be super fast and we had to be the car that doesn’t make a mistake and is always there,” Lynn said. “That is the theme of our season. We always dig in and grind out a result. That’s why I’m so proud of this team and this Cadillac race car. It never misses a beat, and now we can say — on the biggest stage — it didn’t even in the first year of the program. It’s only going to get better.”
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It was by no means a simple race for Cadillac though, as its other two V-Series.Rs hit trouble early and spent much of the race recovering. Action Express had its chance of a strong finish end on the opening lap when Jack Aitken had an off in the wet on the exit of the first Mulsanne Chicane, going nose-first into the guardail, causing damage that would cost the team multiple laps in the garage. The No. 3 Cadillac Racing machine had a better race, finishing fourth, though it, too, lost time when Sebastien Bourdais was rear-ended by the No. 21 AF Corse GTE Ferrari at the Dunlop Bridge on Saturday night and required a trip to the garage for repairs.
The No. 50 AF Corse 499P was delayed by mechanical issues, including a lengthy stint in the garage for a brake leak, and finished fifth.
For Toyota and Ferrari, the second half of the race was extremely tense as both teams were left with a single car apiece in the fight for victory. The No. 7 Toyota had looked to be the faster of the two GR010s but Kamui Kobayashi ended up getting caught in a multi-car pile-up at Tertre Rouge going into a slow zone. Kobayashi was hit from behind by two cars at once — an Alpine ORECA and the JMW Ferrari — which terminally damaged the car.
Ferrari’s No. 50 also looked strong from pole position, but its woes meant Antonio Fuoco, Nicklas Nielsen and Miguel Molina were forced to play rear-gunner for the second half of the race and apply pressure to the No. 8 crew when the two cars came together on track.
But what of the other manufacturers? Porsche and Peugeot both spent time in contention for victory, in part because the opening hours of this race were so chaotic. Pre-race rain made for a greasy track at the start. Further heavy rain came in two bouts into the evening, each time shuffling the order and catching out so many key drivers who were left to fend for themselves on slick tires in the driving rain.
After struggling through the opening rounds of the WEC season with its 9X8s, Peugeot’s search for pace and durability led to Gustavo Menezes hauling the No. 94 into the lead. The Californian was mercurial in the tricky wet conditions, putting Peugeot in the shock position to fight for a famous upset.
Alas, it wasn’t meant to be and the race gradually unraveled for the Peugeot TotalEnergies effort. Menezes, in fact, went from hero to zero overnight, ending up in the barriers at a Mulsanne Chicane, which resulted in the car being repaired in the garage for over 20 minutes. Later in the race the No. 94 hit further trouble with its hydraulic pressure, an issue that impacted both cars.
The No. 93’s eighth-place finish wasn’t the result anyone in the team would have aimed for. Nevertheless, making the end with both cars, and showing some pace on the most important circuit on the calendar, was a mark of real progress, leaving the team wondering whether or not this is the moment the 9X8 program turns the page.
Yifei Ye, another driver who took the lead and then ended up in the barriers, turned the heads of everyone when he steered the Hertz Team JOTA Porsche (which started 60th) to the lead in the fifth hour. Ye then pushed too hard through the Porsche Curves and had an off that severely damaged the car. JOTA would cross the line, but as the last of the classified finishers — 244 laps completed after a lengthy list of woes later in the race. It was a memorable outing for JOTA in only its second race with the 963, but it will leave knowing a better result was on the table.
The same can be said across the board for Porsche. The three factory Penske cars had a torrid time, with mechanical issues impacting each of them. The No. 75 IMSA-crewed car retired out on track with a power loss overnight. The two WEC cars made the finish, 13 and 22 laps down, after a leaking coolant pipe issue overnight and a power loss in the final hour for the No. 5. A puncture, high voltage issue and an off at the Porsche Curves for the No. 6 while pushing to take fourth from the No. 3 Cadillac ended its chances. Unfortunately for the German giant amid its 75th anniversary celebrations, the post-race debrief will not be a positive one.
Of the three non-hybrid entries from Glickenhaus and Vanwall, the American 007s impressed the most, finishing a very respectable sixth and seventh overall.