Yahoo Autos Ferrari wins Le Mans as Hypercars claw through 24 hours of drama
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.
Race winners Alessandro Pier Guidi, James Calado, Antonio Giovinazzi in their Ferrari AF Corse 499P relishing a win in front of the biggest crowd seen at Le Mans in years. Rainier Ehrhardt/Motorsport Images
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.
The aftermath of Hirakawa’s exuberant driving. Rainier Ehrhardt/Motorsport Images
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.”
