The Grand Prix of Endurance is back, the City of Le Mans preparing to become motorsport’s ultimate battleground for the 94th time. Having defeated the defacto Kings of Le Mans and banished Porsche to the USA, Ferrari seek a fourth consecutive crown for the first time since 1964. Yet with the field having closed the performance gap and arriving hungrier than ever, it will be no easy task for the Scuderia – but it never has. Who will emerge from the Porsche curves at 4.00pm on Sunday? It’s time for the oldest endurance test of them all to begin… 

Hypercar

Ten years on from the ultimate heartbreak, Toyota have won the 24 Hours of Le Mans at the first attempt with the new TR010, as the #7 trio of Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi and Nyck De Vries conquer BMW, Cadillac and Ferrari to win the Grand Prix of Endurance. In their third attempt at overall honours BMW score it’s first overall podium at the race since their victory in 1999, as the #20 of Sheldon Van Der Linde, Robin Frijns and Rene Rast score a second place finish, with the podium completed by the #8 Toyota of Brendan Hartley, Ryo Hirakawa and Sebastian Buemi. Completing the top five would be the best placed Cadillac, with #12 ahead of the #51 Ferrari.

With two hours to go, the #7 led the #20 and #8, the top four cars separated by 43sec with the #12 of Will Stevens hanging onto the fight for the win. The #7 led #20 into the stops with the #8 following in, Will Stevens charging through to take the lead of the race on pit cycle.

The #7 meanwhile crucially stayed ahead of #8 during the pit cycle, with Robin Frijns in the #20 dropping to fourth but having taken fresh tires that would take it to the end of the race.

Running as high as eleventh, the #009 Aston Martin Valkyrie suffered a suspension failure on the right rear with Alex Riberas having to guide the car back to the pits, where it was taken into the garage.

But as the #009 went into its box the battle for second overall roared past, with the #8 of Sebastiam Buemi defending hard from the #20’s best efforts to pass with Frijns trying his all but the Toyota man defending hard on much older tires to protect the #7 ahead, the gap slowly growing all the time that Buemi kept the Dutchman behind.

With all of the top three pitting with forty-one minutes left, the battle was not so much BMW V Toyota for the overall win as it was BMW V Toyota for the bragging rights to the second podium position. But Buemi and Frijns both did significant fuel saving on the final stint, attempting to ensure they could make it to the end. In the end the top four ran line astern, the winning margin 10 seconds.

LMP2

Inter Europol took a superb 1-2 in LMP2, with the #43 trio of Nick Yelloly, Jakub Schmeichowski and Tom Dillmann taking top honours for the second year in a row, defending their crown from the #343 of Nico Muller, Bijoy Garg and Rashad De Gerus. On the bottom step of the podium after a valiant fight was the #29 of Forestier by Panis Racing, with Ollie Gray, Esteban Masson and Louis Rousset completing the podium.

Fourth was Vector Sport’s #26 entry ahead of CLX Motorsport’s trio of teengers in the #37 that ran successfully to fifth, all three of its drivers rookies at this race. Then came the IDEC Sport #28 crew, ahead of the Pro/Am winning team of Laurin Heinrich, George Kurtz and Alex Quinn in the #4. Completing the Pro/Am podium was the #183 AF Corse entry of Ben Barnicoat, Francois Perrodo and Mathieu Vaxiviere in second, while on the third step was the AO by TF #99 crew of James Allen, P.J Hyett and Dane Cameron.

Inter Europol held a 1-2 lead left untouched ever since the retirement of the #30 with ninety minutes to go, still running in formation, but with Forestier Racing by Panis now closing in that was suddenly threatened late on, the fourth placed car of Vector Sport’s #26 all but out of the fight.

The gap between the cars themselves was barely a second, the two racing each other essentially to the flag. The defending race winners, #43 of the same trio of drivers that won it were up against the #343 of a trio who’d never won their class, with Nico Muller fighting Tom Dillmann for the class win over the last 70 minutes. Dillmann managed to take the lead from the sister car in the second Mulsanne chicane ahead of its penultimate stop but the #343 fell into the clutches of Esteban Masson who took barely any time to get into second. The gap now stood at 5sec between Masson and Nico Muller, with the former having 12 lap fresher tires heading into the next fuel stop.

By the run to the flag, Dillmann had it covered, comfortably able to romp home to the crew’s second victory in as many years in this class, especially when Masson stalled the chasing #29, now running a minute down on the lead but still held third. Inter Europol were half an hour away from their finest hour.

The #14 TDS Racing entry hopped across the grass on the entry to Tetre Rouge before locking up at Mulsanne Corner and tapping the barriers with Tobias Lutke finishing the car, running thirteenth.

LMGT3

Incredibly, having failed to progress to Hyperpole with any of the four representatives, Corvette have their first class win at Le Mans since 2023, as two of the men present in that victory, Ben Keating and Nicky Catsburg are joined by first-time winner Jonny Edgar in taking class honours in the #33 TF Sport entry.

Lexus’s #78 crew made history in becoming the first drivers to bring the marque into a podium place ever, with the #78 of Tom Van Rompuy, Hadrien David and Jack Hawksworth securing second ahead of the sole surviving #23 Aston Martin Vantage GT3 Evo of Gray Newell, Jonny Adam and Eduardo Barichello.

Fourth was the second Lexus, #87, of Jose Maria Lopez, Clemens Schmid and Petru Umbarescu with fifth place going to the best placed Ferrari 296 GT3 Evo of Simon Mann, Alessio Rovera and Francois Heriau. Sixth was the second of the TF Sport-run Corvettes, with Racing Team Turkey returning to Le Mans for the first time since their 2020 LMGTE-AM class win in the #34. The two Kessel Racing Ferraris were eighth and ninth, #74 ahead of #57.

image credit: T GOUREAU, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons