Category: Endurance Racing

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British GT – Rick Parfitt Jr and Seb Morris Win GT3 Opening Race

Rick Parfitt Junior and Seb Morris took a popular victory in the opening round of the season after an eventful start to the race on JRM’s British GT debut.

Phil Keen and Adam Balon were second as the lead two cars were in a class of their own, before Bradley Ellis and Ollie Wilkinson held off Jonny Cocker and Sam De Haan.

The two Century Motorsport BMWs driven Ben Green/Dominic Paul and Jack Mitchell/Adrian Willmott were next ahead of Jonny Adam/Graham Davidson and Adam Christodoulou/Richard Neary.

Rounding out the GT3 finishers were Marco Sorensen/Andrew Howard and Nicki Thiim/Mark Farmer, the latter spinning early on and unable to make inroads thereafter.

Drama found the British GT series as early as the second lap when Ryan Ratcliffe’s optimistic move on polesitter Iain Loggie had predictable consequences, the Scotsman spun around and both drivers left out of the race after just two minutes.

A lengthy clean up operation saw the Safety Car out for over ten minutes, and Parfitt was able to capitalise on his inherited lead having passed Sam De Haan at the start.

Parfitt was able to pull out a lead of over four seconds over De Haan, who had the attentions of both Century Motorsport BMWs of Paul and Willmott to contend with for much of the opening stint.

While almost all of the GT3 competitors pitted as soon as possible, Parfitt allowed an extra lap to avoid traffic in a tight Oulton Park pit lane. De Haan found out to his cost how tight the pit lane can be, as he lost several positions when handing over to teammate Cocker.

Cocker would pressurise the Aston Martin of Bradley Ellis for the duration of their second stint for third place to little avail at a narrow and twisty Oulton Park, with third place through to ninth covered by five seconds.

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British GT – GT4 Qualifying – Multimatic Motorsports Dominate in GT4 qualifying

Scott Maxwell and Sebastian Priaulx took an unusual qualifying clean sweep in GT4 as the Multimatic Ford Mustangs dominated proceedings at a baking Oulton Park.

Canadian Maxwell, having previously never visited Oulton Park, took pole for the morning race on Monday ahead of teammate Jade Buford, with the HHC McLaren duo Dean MacDonald and Tom Jackson very much the best of the rest.

The TF Sport #95 entry of 16-year-old Patrick Kibble was the highest placed Aston Martin of the early session for TF Sport ahead of Tolman’s Jordan Collard and defending GT4 champions Century Motorsport with Mark Kimber.

Alex Toth-Jones in the Academy Motorsport Aston Martin was eighth, while James Dorlin was ninth for Tolman having graduated from the Renault Clio Cup last year ahead of Pro/Am category Championship contender Kelvin Fletcher in the Beechdean Aston Martin.

In Race Two qualifying, Priaulx was over a second clear of the field as he annihilated his GT4 counterparts.

Scott Malvern’s Team Parker Racing Mercedes was the next best, 1.1s behind the Ford Mustang with Michael Broadhurst third to make it an AMG 2-3.

Martin Plowman backed up teammate Fletcher’s earlier top ten starting position with fourth for Beechdean Aston Martin, with Tom Canning’s TF Sport Aston rounding out a competitive top five.

Matt George was sixth in the Invictus Racing Jaguar ahead of Luke Williams in the HHC McLaren and Lewis Proctor’s Tolman McLaren, with defending champions Century Motorsport ninth on the grid with Angus Fender and Josh Smith in the second Tolman completing the top ten.

Elsewhere, it wasn’t all plain sailing for the three Ford Mustang entries, as Sam Smelt and Aron Taylor-Smith hit strife in the Race Performance #23 to start from the back of the field on Bank Holiday Monday.

 

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British GT – GT3 Qualifying: Loggie and Keen take qualifying spoils.

Iain Loggie will start from pole position for the first race of the British GT 2019 season after an impressive display during AM qualifying.

Loggie was over half a second clear in his first race since switching from Bentley to a Mercedes for this season at a hot Oulton Park.

The Scotsman will lead Ryan Ratcliffe’s Bentley away from the lights on Monday morning after a strong showing from the Welshman, with Sam De Haan’s Lamborghini completing the top three.

Rick Parfitt Junior will go from fourth after again teaming up with Bentley and Seb Morris, ahead of Dominic PAul and Adam Balon.

Callum Willmott and Mark Farmer complete row four as Aston Martin still try to find their feet with the new V8 Vantage ahead of Richard Neary and Graham Davidson, with the troubled Shaun Balfe McLaren and Ollie Wilkinson’s Aston Martin on the penultimate row ahead of Andrew Howard’s Beechdean Aston Martin.

In GT4 Pro qualifying, it was another strong RAM Racing showing as Adam Christodoulou was able to qualify third behind a stunning lap from Phil Keen in the Barwell Lamborghini and Callum Macleod’s excellent showing for Bentley.

Seb Morris’ fourth place to back the earlier result up of his teammate Parfitt suggests that Bentley are back on song after a difficult 2018 campaign for the 2017 champions.

Jonny Cocker was fifth for Barwell ahead of Nicki Thiim and Marco Sorensen in the Aston Martins, while the Century Motorsport BMW duo of Jack Mitchell and Ben Green were eighth and ninth.

Defending champion Jonny Adam was only 10th in the TF Sport Aston Martin V8 Vantage, with Bradley Ellis and Glynn Geddie rounding off the GT3 class after Rob Bell’s McLaren failed to set a time.

IMAGE: Xynamic via @RAMRacing

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Rolex 24 at Daytona Report: #10 takes the glory in rain-interrupted long haul

The #10 Wayne Taylor Racing (WTR) has done what many expected it to do before the race, take the victory in relatively dominant fashion. However, that win looked less than certain at times with the team avoiding disaster on more than one occasion. Daytona Prototype international (DPi) stole most of the headlines, but it was an intense race throughout the field with three other worthy winners in addition to the #10.

The 24-hour race lived up to the common IndyCar and NASCAR saying of ‘cautions breed cautions’ with 16 yellow periods, many of which came in quick succession of the previous caution. The rain was as bigger factor as any in deciding the race; forecasts predicted it would hit the track at 5 am local time and it arrived pretty punctually, starting to fall in the fourteenth hour of the race and then relentlessly falling for the remainder of it. The two red flags were both caused by excessive amounts of water on the track, with the second red flag eventually bringing an end to the race, ten minutes short of the scheduled time.

Qualifying is never the most important thing in a 24-hour race, and this was proven by the fact that only one of the four polesitters made it onto the class podiums. Despite this, the #77 Mazda DPi polesitter was a strong front-runner, leading on multiple occasions and fighting hard with the #10 WTR, #31 Whelen Engineering and the two Penskes; that was until the car caught fire in the night and was forced to retire.

The #55 Mazda didn’t exactly fare much better… after showing strong pace in the first half of the race, the #55 stopped out on track, disappeared behind the wall and was eventually retired from the race, just short of the seventeenth hour. Mazda had the pace, but they lacked the reliability, and that’s a problem in a 24-hour race.

Fortune was much more in favour of the victorious #10 with Fernando Alonso delivering an incredible overnight performance, and then another masterclass in the torrential rain, to help the team to the win. Jordan Taylor, Kamui Kobayashi and Renger Van Der Zande all also delivered admirable performances with teamwork well and truly making the dream work.

Towards the end of the race, the #31 looked to be in prime position for the win, but, like so many others, Felipe Nasr fell victim to the very slippery Turn 1, running wide and conceding the lead to Alonso shortly before the final red flag was flown. Second was clearly a bit of a disappointment for the Whelen Engineering team as they were so close to the victory, yet came away just one place short. Like most the other non-winners, they’ll be leaving Daytona thinking ‘what if…’.

Penske went into Daytona almost expecting a win, so coming away with only one of their cars on the podium is obviously going to be a bit of a let-down for them. Both the #6 and #7 were contenders for the win, but it all went wrong for the #6 when, not long after the race resumed from the first red flag, Simon Pagenaud pulled into the pits with white smoke billowing from the engine. The #6 went behind the wall and lost seventeen laps to the leader, re-emerging to finish the race in sixth place. The #7 had a better race, finishing third as the last car on the lead lap in DPi but there were certainly points, especially when Alexander Rossi was at the wheel, when it looked like they could’ve won.

With only four LMP2s in the race, there was always a risk that there wouldn’t actually be enough finishers to fill the podium; this was the reality when polesitter and eventual third-place finisher #81 stopped on track with three hours left on the clock and failed to get going again.

The #18 was nearly another casualty in LMP2 as it found itself in the barriers shortly before the final red flag. Despite the late incident, it was the #18 DragonSpeed that took the class win at the hands of Roberto Gonzalez, Pastor Maldonado, Sebastian Saavedra and Ryan Cullen. Saavedra summed up the situation under the second red flag better than anyone else stating that “these cars are not meant to be boats” when the Daytona track was more like a river.

GTLM was the only class where all entries were still running by the time the second red flag came out, but that’s not to say that the class didn’t have its share of drama.

Most of the media hype was centred around the car that ended up finishing last in class – the #24 BMW with a certain Alex Zanardi on the team. Trouble started for the team before even the second hour of the race when Zanardi got in for his first stint and the car failed to get away. It turned out to be a problem with the steering rack and its response to Zanardi’s specially adapted wheel and, after a bit of toing and froing, the #24 was back on track. During his stint, Zanardi was setting fastest laps for the class but it wasn’t long before trouble struck the team again and they eventually trundled home eighteen laps off the lead.

The other BMW, the #25, had a much better race as they took the class win after a relatively clean race where they only really had two dramas: one was a broken windscreen wiper and the other was some damage caused by puncture debris from another car. The successful crew were Connor De Phillippi, Philipp Eng, Colton Herta and Augusto Farfus, the latter of whom was a last-minute replacement for Tom Blomqvist who was ruled out of the race due to visa issues.

GTD was the largest class and proved to be where a lot of the action was at. There were various crashes, spins and breakdowns in the 23-car GTD field, but it was the #11 Grasser Racing run Lamborghini that took the victory after long-time leaders, #33 Mercedes, spun out just minutes before the red flag was flown. Three different manufacturers occupied the podium with Lamborghini winning, the Montasplast run Audi second and the AIM Vasser Sullivan run Lexus third – showing just how competitive the field was throughout the race.

That concludes what was a brilliantly eventful Rolex 24 at Daytona, packed full of action for every minute of the green flag running, and even for some of the yellow and red running! The IMSA season continues at Sebring on the 14th-16th March.

Results:

DPi

1)      #10 Wayne Taylor Racing – Van Der Zande / J. Taylor / Alonso / Kobayashi

2)      #31 Whelen Engineering Racing – Nasr / Curran / Derani

3)      #7 Acura Team Penske – Montoya / Cameron / Pagenaud

LMP2

1)      #18 DragonSpeed – Gonzalez / Maldonado / Saavedra / Cullen

2)      #38 Performance Tech Motorsports – K. Masson / R. Masson / Cassels / Wright

3)      #81 DragonSpeed – Hedman / Hanley / Lapierre / Allen

GTLM

1)      #25 BMW Team RLL – Farfus / De Phillippi / Eng / Herta

2)      #62 Risi Competizione – Rigon / Molina / Pier Guidi / Calado

3)      #912 Porsche GT Team – Bamber / L. Vanthoor / Jaminet

GTD

1)      #11 Grasser Racing Team – Ineichen / Bortolotti / Engelhart / Breukers

2)      #29 Montaplast by Land Motorsport – Morad / Mies / D. Vanthoor / Feller

3)      #12 AIM Vasser Sullivan – Montecalvo / Bell / Telitz / Segal

To view the full race results click here

 

(Featured image credit: IMSA)

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British GT – Mitchell hangs on to GT4 championship

Jack Mitchell was crowned British GT4 champion after a nail-biting finale at the Donington Decider.

Along with Dean MacDonald, eighth place meant he beat Century Motorsport BMW teammates Ben Green and Ben Tuck, who were fifth, by a single point, and with the Tolman McLaren duo of Michael O’Brien a further point behind after a second place finish.

Finlay Hutchison and Daniel McKay took Equipe Verschuur McLaren’s first victory of the British GT season after plenty of near misses in 2018, with Tolman’s Joe Osborne and David Pattison completing an all McLaren 570s podium.

HHC’s Patrik Matthiesen suffered early trouble when he went off on the first lap and had to pit to clear his car of grass and debris, but that was one of few flashpoints in the GT4 class in the early throes of the race.

A serene opening stint was brought to life when the Academy Motorsport Aston Martin of Tom Wood suffered an engine failure and dropped oil all over the circuit, meaning that McKay took a detour at Redgate when he lost grip.

That brought the safety car out for the only time in the race, shortly before pitstops.

Pit stops were to prove a key part of this race, as the #4 McLaren gained plenty to climb to second while the lead, while both Century Motorsport BMWs now driven by Tuck and Mitchell were among those to be given a 10s stop/go as a result of pit infringements.

Tuck was able to recover to fifth after leaving the pits seventh, while Mitchell was ninth at after his penalty. He managed to pass the Invictus Jaguar of Jsson Wolfe to secure the title by a solitary point.

 

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British GT – GT4: Tuck and Green take pole, championship leader Mitchell seventh

Century Motorsport’s Ben Tuck and Ben Green have taken British GT4 pole ahead of tomorrow’s championship decider.

A session-long battle with the Equipe Verschuur McLaren of Finlay Hutchison and Daniel McKay ended with the #42 crew applying maximum championship pressure on teammate and leader Jack Mitchell and co-driver Dean MacDonald, who were only seventh.

Ben Barnicoat and Adam Balon were third in the #72 Balfe McLaren 570s, Barnicoat setting the second-fastest GT4 time in the final session.

Will Moore and Matt Nicoll-Jones are fourth and have an outside chance of the title should they convert that into a win and their rivals fall by the wayside. The Academy Motorsport duo are fifth, 31 points behind Mitchell.

One of those rivals are Michael O’Brien and Charlie Fagg in the #4 Tolman Motorsport McLaren. They line up sixth for the race tomorrow and have a similarly outside chance, 28 points back in fourth place in the standings.

The team third in the standings are the #55 duo of Callum Pointon and Patrik Matthiesen in the HHC Motorsport Ginetta. They are 13.5 points behind Mitchell, but have work to do to overhaul him.

Elsewhere, British Touring Car Championship race winner Adam Morgan was fastest in the Ciceley Racing #25 Mercedes during the second part of GT4 qualifying, sharing with amateur David Fairbrother.

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The 24 Hours of Alonso

The Canadian Grand Prix was a milestone for one of the drivers. Fernando Alonso would start his 300th Grand Prix in Formula 1 (although some still argue it was his 297th start as he did not start all of them). This was enough reason to make it a memorable weekend for the Spaniard. Knowing that he doesn’t have a winning car in the McLaren-Renault, the expectations were not that high. Finishing in the points would be more than enough. After a very disappointing qualifying; he only ended up in P14, hoping to get just one point as overtaking at Montreal can be difficult. He didn’t have an amazing start, which doesn’t happen often to the Spanish McLaren driver, but he did fight his way through the field. This ended in vein as he had to retire the car again due to problems with the electronics.

A disappointing 300th Grand Prix in F1 it was then for Fernando. However, he did have something else to look forward to. As part of his pursue to the Triple Crown, he would participate at the 24 Hours of Le Mans with the Toyota LMP1 team. He already won the Monaco GP twice, but he didn’t have an overall victory at the 24 Hours of Le Mans yet. The third piece of the Triple Crown is a victory at the Indy 500. Fernando did participate at that race last year and it looked like he could actually win the race as a rookie, until his Honda engine blew up near the end of the race. He thus still has to win both of them. This weekend Alonso had his first try at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Could he get this important victory after another disappointing weekend in Formula 1?

Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve, Montreal, Canada Fernando Alonso, McLaren.
Image courtesy of Steven Tee/McLaren ref: Digital Image _1ST9206

The Toyota number 8 car with Nakajima, Buemi and Alonso as the drivers took pole as Nakajima posted the fastest time in Qualifying 3 with a 3:15.377, putting them in front of their sister car number 7 with a gap of two seconds. This of course meant that the first ever victory for the Toyota team at Le Mans was within reach.

As Alonso was a rookie at Le Mans, it would be a risk to put him behind the wheel for the start of the race as it can be quite busy. That’s why Buemi was allowed to go first. Their race could’ve ended very early as Buemi had to defend hard to keep his first place, which led to a light touch with the Rebellion number 1 car which then went on and crashed into the Dragonspeed car.

It was at night, with thirteen hours left on the clock, where Alonso showed his full potential. The Spaniard took the wheel over from Buemi who had a good stint, but the gap to the number 7 Toyota kept growing. Fernando solely closed the gap to the number 7 Toyota from 1 minute and 30 seconds to just 40 seconds. Finding his way through the traffic he posted some very fast lap times. With eleven hours to go, Nakajima took over from the Spaniard and the fight for victory would go on between the Toyotas. They didn’t have a complete flawless race, as both cars got stop-and-go penalties for speeding during a slow zone. These penalties eventually got the number 7 car out of the running for the victory as they got two penalties in succession near the end of the race. Toyota, however, decided to not let Fernando take the flag, but the Japanese drivers Nakajima for the number 8 car and Kobayashi for the number 7 car. This was a good choice, as Nakajima finally could get his redemption for the drama in 2016, where the car stopped working with just one lap left. After 24 hours, the Toyotas took the flag in P1 and P2, giving them their first ever overall victory at Le Mans.

#8 TOYOTA GAZOO RACING / JPN / Toyota TS050 – Hybrid – Hybrid / Sebastien Buemi (CHE) / Fernando Alonso (ESP) / Kazuki Nakajima (JPN)
Image courtesy of fia wec

Of course this victory for Toyota couldn’t come without complaints from critics. With Toyota being the only factory team in the LMP1 class, there wasn’t any competition . The privateer teams like Rebellion and SMP couldn’t match the pace of the Toyotas at all. Bykolles retired early in the race after a crash, and Rebellion number 1 with Lotterer behind the wheel knew a difficult start after hitting the Dragonspeed LMP1 car.

Many fans thus say that the victory wasn’t that unexpected and some even say it was undeserved because of the lack of competition. This might be partially true as it was indeed just a fight between the Toyotas up front. However, the last two years the Toyotas retired from the lead, with perhaps the most dramatic finish ever at Le Mans in 2016, But to win at Le Mans you have to battle against Le Mans itself.  It was not a battle against an Audi or a Porsche, but a fight against themselves as they still had to survive those 24 hours. An engine problem could end their race in a second, a crash could end their race, a suspension failure could end their race  and so on. Even with the fastest car you’re not safe from the wear and tear of Le Mans, hence the comment “to win at Le Mans you have to beat Le Mans”.

And it isn’t just the cars that have to survive, the drivers need to survive as well. Especially with a rookie, in endurance racing that is, it can be tough. Keeping up the pace all 24 hours long, fighting through the always unpredictable traffic and driving for more than two hours straight each stint wears those drivers out. A good example of that were the faces of Alonso and former F1 teammate at McLaren Jenson Button in their cars near the end of the race. They both had very tired eyes and in interviews they looked and sounded very tired as well.

A win at Le Mans therefore is never undeserved. It might be less special without the competition from other factory teams, but it is still a tough race on itself.

#8 TOYOTA GAZOO RACING / JPN / Toyota TS050 – Hybrid – Hybrid / Sebastien Buemi (CHE) / Fernando Alonso (ESP) / Kazuki Nakajima (JPN)
Image courtesy of Joao Filipe/fia wec

Winning at Monaco and Le Mans, Alonso just needs one win to be the second person ever to take the Triple Crown, the Indy 500 victory. The Le Mans win could mean then that he will focus fully on Indycar and this might be his last season of Formula 1. The WEC ‘superseason’ ends with the Le Mans race of 2019, where Alonso potentially could get a second victory there. He already has two wins at the Monaco GP. Could Alonso be the first driver ever to achieve the Triple Crown twice?

 

Featured image courtesy of Steven Tee/McLaren ref: Digital Image _1ST0758

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Le Mans LMP2: G-Drive takes maiden Le Mans win

The #26 G-Drive of Jean-Éric Vergne, Andrea Pizzitola and Romain Rusinov put in a commanding display at the 24 Hours of Le Mans to take the outfit’s first win at the event.

The #26 initially had a poor start, with Vergne losing places at on the opening lap and dropping to seventh. But after recovering one place to sixth, Vergne then went a lap longer before pitting than the leading group and the offset was enough to bring the #26 out into first, where it remained for the rest of the race to finish fifth overall and two laps up on the rest of the LMP2 field.

#36 Signatech Alpine A470 / Andrej Alesko, WEC Media

Finishing a distant second behind G-Drive was the #36 Signatech Alpine, driven by Nicolas Lapierre, Pierre Thiriet and André Negrão.

For most of the race, the #36 had been locked in a close fight over the runners-up spot with the #23 Panis-Barthez Ligier, with the two cars trading second and third throughout Saturday evening and into the night.

But with four hours remaining on Sunday morning, Will Stevens brought the #23 Ligier into the pits with technical issues—he was kept there for over an hour, dropping him to 11th and allowing Signatech Alpine to finish second unchallenged.

Panis-Barthez’s lengthy stop promoted the polesitting #48 IDEC Sport Oreca into third, until gearbox problems ended the latter’s race within the final hours.

In the #48’s absence, the #39 Graff Oreca inherited third and held the position until the chequered flag, with Tristan Gommendy fending off a late charge by former race winner Loïc Duval in TDS Racing’s #28 car.

#47 Cetilar Villorba Corse Dallara P217 / Marius Hecker, WEC Media

Juan Pablo Montoya ended his Le Mans debut in fifth in the #32 United Autosports after a puncture in the penultimate hour dropped the Colombian a lap behind the LMP2 leaders. Jackie Chan DC Racing’s all-Malaysian #37 car finished sixth while the #31 Dragonspeed, which had started second and led early on, finished seventh.

Racing Team Nederland’s #29 was the highest Dallara finisher in ninth, sandwiched between the #38 and #33 Jackie Chan cars. There were issues for the #35 SMP and the #47 Cetilar Villorba Corse, with steering problems for the former and a late crash for the latter putting them 12th and 13th in class respectively.

As well as the #48 IDEC, there were four other retirements in the 20-car LMP2 field. The #34 Jackie Chan became the first after suffering an engine failure during the night, and was followed two laps later by the #40 G-Drive, which was spun into the Porsche Curves wall by José Gutiérrez. The #25 Algarve Pro Racing also retired, and United Autosports’ #22 car crashed out from fourth with four hours left.

The #44 Eurasia did not retire, but went unclassified as it failed to complete the final lap of the race.

#22 United Autosports Ligier JSP217 / Joao Filipe, WEC Media
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Le Mans LMP1: Alonso adds to Triple Crown bid with #8 Toyota win

Toyota broke its 24 Hours of Le Mans curse with an emotional 1–2 finish led home by the #8 car of Sebastien Buemi, Kazuki Nakajima and Fernando Alonso.

#8 and #7 Toyota TS050 Hybrids / Toyota Gazoo Racing

The Japanese marque was the overwhelming favourite coming into the 86th running of Le Mans, and aggressive opening stints from both Buemi and the #7 car’s Mike Conway soon put the two TS050 Hybrids well ahead of the privateer LMP1 entries battling for third.

The #7 gained the advantage late on Saturday when Buemi earned the #8 car a 60-second stop-go penalty for speeding in a slow zone. But a pair of rapid nighttime recovery drives by first Alonso and then Nakajima saw the #7’s lead disappear. Nakajima then completed the #8’s comeback in the 16th hour by snatching first place from Kamui Kobayashi on the inside of Arnage.

The #8 went on to hold the lead for the remaining eight hours, while the #7 dropped back after a series of late difficulties that included Jose Maria Lopez spinning at the Dunlop chicane and Kobayashi missing a pit stop and needing to take an extra lap at full course yellow speed to save fuel.

In the end Nakajima brought the #8 Toyota across the line with two laps in hand over Kobayashi in the sister car, which was a further ten laps clear of the #3 Rebellion in third. The win was Toyota’s first at Le Mans after 19 attempts and the first by a Japanese manufacturer since Mazda in 1991. Nakajima meanwhile became the first Japanese driver to win since Seiji Ara did so with Audi in 2004.

#3 Rebellion Racing R13 / Joao Filipe, WEC Media

Behind the Toyotas, Rebellion and SMP Racing immediately established themselves as the chief contenders for best-of-the-rest.

After Andre Lotterer lost the nose of his #1 Rebellion in a first lap collision, it was Thomas Laurent in the sister #3 who took charge of the Swiss team’s race by pressuring the #17 SMP of Stephane Sarrazin for third.

The two Frenchmen and their subsequent replacements swapped third and fourth position several times in the opening hours of the race, although the battle was eventually ended early and in Rebellion’s favour when Matevos Isaakyan spun the #17 into the barriers at the Porsche Curves shortly after midnight.

Isaakyan’s crash came not long after Dominik Kraihamer spun the #4 ByKolles out of the race at the same part of the track. The #10 Dragonspeed was another casualty of the Porsche Curves with Ben Hanley finding the barriers in hour 17, while the Manor-run #6 CEFC Ginetta and the #11 SMP were both waylaid by mechanical troubles to make it five LMP1 retirements by the end of the race.

That left the #1 Rebellion—which recovered from its opening lap crash and several late penalties to take fourth—and the #5 CEFC Ginetta, as the only surviving LMP1 cars outside of the podium.

#6 CEFC Ginetta G60-LT-P1 / Joao Filipe, WEC Media
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Toyota can’t fail this year

Le Mans 24 – Iconic. Photo credit Toyota Gazoo Racing WEC

Toyota have never won the 24 hours of Le Mans which is one of the world’s most demanding races. They are massive favourites this year and they have got the best chance through various reasons! 

Toyota are the only team in the leading LMP1 Hybrid class, as Porsche withdrew from the series last year. They have no realistic competition and you could say the LMP1 rule book gives them an advantage that places Toyota in firm control.

The number seven car will be piloted by Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi and José María López. Photo credit, Toyota WEC

The handicaps that the privateer LMP1 teams are as follows. They are not allowed to lap faster than the hybrid class, and if the privateers do, they will get a drive through penalty. The others involves the pit stops, in that a hybrid car can go a lap longer of 11 laps on fuel, whilst the privateer cars can only go 10 laps. Finally the hybrids also have a minimum pit stop time of 5 seconds which shorter than the other class. Toyota therefore will spend much less time in the pits than any other team. So realistically reliability is the only thing that would prevent them. 

Toyota have come so close in recent years and it was reliability that stopped them. The team came closest in 2016, it was leading for 23hrs 55mins until a failure happened on the penultimate lap. Porsche overtook them for victory, it was heartbreaking for the Japanese team. To add insult to injury the car took them over 11 minutes to finish the last lap which meant they were not even classified. In the race you have to complete the last lap in under 6 minutes by regulation 10.5 to be classed.

Sébastien Buemi, Kazuki Nakajima and Le Mans rookie Fernando Alonso pilot the number eight car. Photo credit, Toyota WEC

In their #8 challenger, they have Sébastien Buemi, Kazuki Nakajima and Fernando Alonso, who is driving for them as well McLaren in Formula 1. Alonso has taken to endurance racing like a duck to water as it was his car that took victory in the first round of the World Endurance Series in Spa, Belgium. It was his first win since the 2013 Spanish Grand Prix in F1. 

To have without a doubt the fastest car on the grid, rules restricting the limited opposition they have and an increased calibre of drivers is it just a matter of the #7 or #8 taking victory?

It would be embarrassing for the manufacturer to lose this year, they would become a laughing stock. If they fail to win I also see the end of the LMP1 Hybrid category. To have one team in that field is also just ridiculous. 

We’ll find out! Follow @PitCrew_Online as we’ll have commentary throughout,  and get the kettle on for the early hours. 

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