Welcome back, Toyota, it’s good to see you again. I’ll let RJ’s excellent guide to the show guide this description for our Le Mans 24 Hours Review, sorry it was slightly later than planned – Dre
For over three decades, Toyota at Le Mans was a tale of persistent sorrow, with its lowest moment coming ten years ago when its leading car, with Kazuki Nakajima behind the wheel, retired from the lead as it took the white flag. Toyota had since gotten the win at Le Mans after 33 years of trying, but only after LMP1 rivals Audi and Porsche left the sport, leaving Toyota to pick off five straight wins against several privateer efforts (and RebAlpine, for a bit). Since the proper start of the OEM Hypercar era, however, Toyota had gotten reacquainted with disappointment at Le Mans, narrowly finishing second twice to Ferrari in the last three years and falling further away last year.
But now, at last, Toyota has a Le Mans win with no qualifiers, no “yeah but”s, no cubic zirconia, no purported asterisks – going through strong competition to get there in the form of BMW M Team WRT and Cadillac Hertz Team JOTA, who put forth two very strong efforts all race week. The #20 BMW (Frijns/Rast/Sheldon van der Linde) surged to the lead on the first lap, the #8 (Buemi/Hartley/Hirakawa) Toyota TR010 Hybrid led the most laps after going to an alternate pit strategy early, and Cadillac then gained the advantage by being the first to switch to soft tyres at night.
Yet it was the #7 Toyota of Mike Conway, Nyck de Vries, and Kamui Kobayashi that came back from a mediocre first quarter of the race, impeded by an untimely puncture and a driveshaft sensor problem, which took home the victory. A Safety Car for Porsche driver Ayhancan Güven’s big crash, and a Full Course Yellow for a broken down Aston Martin LMGT3 car, and some crafty overtaking (Golden Melon, anyone?) helped the #7 Toyota take the lead and never give it up.
It’s Conway and Kobayashi’s second overall wins at Le Mans for Toyota, and the first for de Vries. The #20 BMW came a close second, finishing 10.9 seconds off the win in the second-closest competitive finish at Le Mans in event history, while the #8 Toyota and #12 Cadillac (Stevens/Nato/Deletraz) finished third and fourth.
