The 88th 24 Hours of Le Mans lacked drama and felt procedural.
Everything followed the script. The only thing that was missing was the rain.
Toyota was the fastest car and dominated the event. Rebellion remained in the mirrors of the TS050 Hybrid, a reminder they were ready to pounce should a mistake or error occur, but as long as Toyota kept all four wheels on the tarmac and heading forward, Rebellion would settle for the consolation of a podium finish.
The largest heart flutter came a little past the halfway point when the #7 Toyota of Kamui Kobayashi rolled into the pit lane after a turbo failure and was pushed into the garage for repairs. Brendon Hartley, in his first Le Mans with the Toyota, was ready to slip the #8 Toyota into the top position while the mechanics plugged away at the rear of the sister car in an effort to get it back in the race.
Once the turbo was replaced, the #7 Toyota's goal was to run down the Rebellions and give Toyota two podium positions. It took 11 hours, but when Louis Delétraz had an off in the #3 Rebellion at Indianapolis and had to stop for repairs, the #7 Toyota moved into third.
It was another year where Kobayashi, Mike Conway and José María López had the legs over their teammate at Le Mans, but the glory goes to the other side of the garage. Last year, it was a tire puncture and a failure to replace the correct faulty ring of rubber on the first unscheduled pit stop, leading the car to limp around before needing a second unscheduled pit stop to correct the error and handing the #8 Toyota a victory.
Sébastien Buemi suffered a tire puncture in the first hour this year, throwing the #8 Toyota off sequence and allowing the #7 Toyota to have a lap lead 12 hours into the race. As we have seen at Le Mans the previous two years, the #8 Toyota has run another faultless race. This year, it was not the blessing of Fernando Alonso's presence that saw Toyota's long-time lead car complete 24 hours without major hiccups.
Buemi, Hartley and Kazuki Nakajima missed out on the heartache through a drama-less race. Other than the early puncture, the #8 Toyota did not have a massive off or get caught in another incident. A driver didn't have a spin while in traffic. The car stayed pointed in the right direction through the checkered flag. Nakajima's 2016 sputter from the lead in the final minutes, handing Porsche its 18th Le Mans victory while Toyota's painful wait for its initial triumph continued, might have been penance paid in advance, allowing the spoils of victory to shower over whoever enters this car.
Four years ago, Nakajima and Buemi were sinking in one of Le Mans' most crushing defeats. At the end of the 2020 race, they are the ninth and tenth drivers to win Le Mans in three consecutive years, the first to do it since Marco Werner from 2005 to 2007. Hartley is now a two-time Le Mans winner, a co-driver in Porsche's most recent Le Mans victory, the final Le Mans victory for the Porsche 919 Hybrid, and now he will get the final victory in the LMP1-era at Le Mans.
Toyota lifts itself up to level with the French manufactures Matra-Simca and Peugeot on three Le Mans victories. Only seven manufactures have more overall victories than Toyota and Alfa Romeo and Ford are within striking distance for next year.
This was Rebellion's swan song. The team is exiting sports car racing at the end of the 2019-20 FIA World Endurance Championship. The #1 Rebellion R13 took three checkered flags earlier this season with Gustavo Menezes, Norman Nato and Bruno Senna, but the team will have to settle for a runner-up result at Le Mans, five laps behind the #8 Toyota.
Rebellion has long been one of the best privateer LMP1 entrants, experiencing the hardships that come with arm wrestling the mighty manufacture dollars and even stepping back to LMP2 for a year, however the team is ending on a high. It entered a competitive automobile that kept Toyota honest over 24 hours. The Swiss outfit deserves only praise.
United Autosports stuck to the LMP2 script and the pre-race favorite came out on top, though the final 15 minutes were more hectic than any other point over the first 23 hours and 45 minutes. With just over nine minutes to go, Phil Hanson had to pit for fuel in the #22 Oreca while having a 52-second lead over the #38 Jota Sport Oreca of Anthony Davidson. Needing only a splash of fuel, Hanson emerged from the pit lane just six-seconds clear of Davidson, though Davidson himself had to stop a lap later for his final splash of fuel, sealing a victory for United Autosports.
Filipe Albuquerque and Phil Hanson continue a remarkable 2020 season and their Le Mans victory clinched them the Endurance Trophy for LMP2 Drivers championship. The Anglo-Portuguese pairing has won four consecutive WEC races, all with Paul di Resta as the third driver, three of which have come from pole position, including Le Mans. In the European Le Mans Series, Albuquerque and Hanson have won the last two races and lead that championship with two rounds to go, two rounds from a historic accomplishment.
Similar to Toyota, the spoils of victory might have spilt out of the cup of the sister #32 United Autosports Oreca, only to flow into the mouth of the #22 Oreca. With eight hours remaining, the #32 Oreca suffered an oil leak and fell out of the battle.
Jota Sport was on United's coattails for most of this race, but Le Mans success continues to elude Davidson, who picked up his fourth Le Mans podium finish, none of which have seen him on the top step. António Félix da Costa and Roberto González each get their first bit of Le Mans hardware, though in the form of runner-up trophies. A messy final hour saw the #31 Panis Racing Oreca of Julien Canal, Nico Jamin and Matthieu Vaxivière inherit third position when the #26 G-Drive Racing Oreca of Jean-Éric Vergne went off at Indianapolis with broken suspension.
Aston Martin's incredible 2019-20 season continued at Le Mans, taking victories in each GTE-Pro and GTE-Am.
After four podium finishes from the first seven WEC races this season, but never finishing better than third, the #97 Aston Martin Vantage AMR of Alex Lynn, Maxime Martin and Harry Tincknell's first trip to the top step of the podium is in the most famous event on the calendar. Lynn and Martin had been co-drivers the previous two years, never finishing better than 12th in class. Tincknell was a refugee from the shuttered Ford GT program. Tincknell had won in the LMP2 class on his Le Mans debut six years ago.
The #51 AF Corse Ferrari fell just shy of successfully defending its GTE-Pro class victory. James Calado, Alessandro Pier Guidi and Daniel Serra mixed it up with the Aston Martins for majority of this race, but a runner-up finish will have to do in 2020. Calado and Pier Guidi will have the consolation of closing the gap to the #95 Aston Martin of Marco Sørensen and Nicki Thiim in the World Endurance GTE Drivers' Championship with one round to go. Sørensen and Thiim were third with Richard Westbrook.
This victory and third-place finish clinched the World Endurance GTE Manufacture Championship for Aston Martin.
In the amateur class, the #90 TF Sport Aston Martin and Jonny Adam, Charlie Eastwood and Salih Yoluç were victorious, the team's fourth victory this season, and TF Sport will lead the Endurance Trophy for GTE-Am Drivers championship heading into the Bahrain season finale in two months.
The story of LMP1 and LMP2 repeats itself for a third time in GTE-Am, a sister car benefitting from the misfortune from a stablemate. The #98 Aston Martin had been leading when Ross Gunn suffered a rear suspension failure and brought that car to the garage with a third of the race remaining. The #98 Aston Martin has become accustomed to victory slipping from its grasp. Paul Dalla Lana saw the car crash out from the lead in the final hour in 2015 and was not classified. Dalla Lana retired or had not been classed in five eight Le Mans start entering this race in the #98 Aston Martin, this is despite being one of the best GTE-Am teams for the better part of a decade, having won 15 of 34 races over a four-season period at one point.
The safety car period in the final hour led to a scrap for the final two GTE-Am podium positions. The #77 Dempsey-Proton Racing Porsche of Matt Campbell, Riccardo Pera and Christian Ried came home in second ahead of the #83 AF Corse Ferrari of Emmanuel Collard, François Perrodo and Niklas Nielsen. With the #90 TF Sport Aston Martin's victory, it leads the championship with 148 points, eight points ahead of the #83 Ferrari, which led the championship entering Le Mans. The #56 Team Project 1 Porsche of Egidio Perfetti, Matteo Cairoli and Larry Ten Voorde was fourth.
In the middle of the night, it didn't feel like Le Mans. It felt like another endurance race clicking along through the darkness with no end in sight.
But the specialness of Le Mans broke through. Cars flew at a blistering pace down Mulsanne. Cars spun off in the Porsche curves. Safety car periods dragged on. Leaders broke down. Mechanics wrenched in garages through sleep deprivation. It was everything we sell Le Mans as for 51 weeks of the year, and yet it felt underwhelming, though the final hour did its best to save the day.
That is not to say this year would have been better off without the race taking place at all. We rather have had this Le Mans than no Le Mans at all in 2020. These feelings extend beyond the pandemic, which certainly left its fingerprints on this year's race, more for who was not on track than for who participated, but this Le Mans is a dull end to an otherwise strong chapter in sports car racing.
This was the last race for the LMP1 class, which has been the premier class since 2004. Audi dominated the LMP1-era, though it last competed four years ago. In the last 16 years, Audi battled Pescarolo, Peugeot, Porsche and Toyota. Nissan and Aston Martin both even made brief attempts to compete in the top class. Peugoet, Porsche and Toyota each had their share of success, but Audi changed the game.
Audi introduced diesel when everyone was sipping petrol. Though Pescarolo brought hybrid to the table, Audi elevated it to a higher level. Sixteen years ago, hybrid automobiles earned eye rolls from plenty of everyday drivers, casting it as a weak technology for the tree-huggers worried about the environment. Now, it is a reasonable option many motorists take into consideration when purchasing an automobile.
We may never know how much motorsports contributed to the change in hybrids perception over the last two decades, but for the last eight years a hybrid won the 24 Hours of Le Mans, an accomplishment that speaks of everything but weakness in technology.
Technological capabilities aside, hybrid technology is one of the reasons why LMP1 is ending and Le Mans Hypercar is beginning. While being necessary to succeed, the hybrid technology priced out manufactures. It became an unsustainable arms race. Audi had done it all by the end of 2016. There was no reason left to stay with that level of cost. Porsche won Le Mans three times and three championships, and on the heels of Volkswagen's emissions scandal, that program shuttered, leaving Toyota the last standing hybrid on the grid.
The FIA and ACO could not afford Toyota to exit. Hypercar is an attempt to make the top class more affordable and make hybrids optional, hoping to attract manufactures that were otherwise dissatisfied with what LMP1 had to offer.
Toyota will remain. Peugeot will return in 2022. The other Hypercar options lack global recognition. American hypercar manufacture Glickenhaus plans to enter in 2021. Long-time LMP1 privateer ByKolles stated its intent to build a hypercar. Alpine will run grandfathered and re-badged Rebellion R13s. Aston Martin was set to enter but has since postponed its Valkyrie program.
Along with Hypercar, the trans-Atlantic Le Mans Daytona h class will allow the top cars from IMSA to compete in the top class in WEC and 24 Hours of Le Mans while using a spec hybrid system. LMDh is scheduled to debut in 2023 and it could allow manufactures to compete for Le Mans glory at a more affordable cost than Hypercar.
I feel like we have been talking about uncertainty around Le Mans' future for the last five years. For two or three of those years it was general consternation, fear of losing what existed, knowing change would come but that change was not imminent. Now, change is here. Now, we don't know what is next. The cars will be new next year, but we are not certain if the competition will increase to a higher level.
There is a big difference between a Le Mans with Audi vs. Peugeot or Audi vs. Porsche vs. Toyota and the last few years at Le Mans when it was Toyota vs. reliability. It is still Le Mans, there is inherited excitement that comes with the event, but intensity lacks over the entire 24 hours. There are a few nervy moments when a turbo fails or a tire is punctured, but once those are rectified, the air is let out of the balloon.
This was the 88th 24 Hours of Le Mans and there have not been 87 years of multiple-manufacture battles coming down to the final minutes to decide the winner like we saw with Audi vs. Porsche vs. Toyota. There were plenty of years when Porsche was the only contender. It was Audi vs. reliability for most of the German manufacture's time at Le Mans. Le Mans has survived worse than what the 2020 race had to offer, but the taste of something more delectable remains on our lips, while a less savory option is on our plates.
Our wait for what is next will be short. It is September. Our first glimpse at the future is only nine months away.
