After five runner-up finishes, some due to being beat on speed and others because of sheer misfortune, Toyota has finally won the 24 Hours of Le Mans and it comes at the hands of Sébastien Buemi, Kazuki Nakajima and Fernando Alonso in the #8 Toyota TS050 Hybrid.
This trio has now won the first two round of the 2018-18 FIA World Endurance Championship but the unpopular but popular story is Fernando Alonso clinching the second of three legs of the Triple Crown of Motorsports. The man won twice on the streets of Monaco, in consecutive years in 2006-07 and 11 years after his last victory in the principality the man has become the sixth driver to win at Monaco and Le Mans joining Tazio Nuvolari, Maurice Trintignant, Bruce McLaren, Jochen Rindt and the man he looks to join at a special motorsports pantheon, Graham Hill.
The only thing left for Fernando Alonso is the Indianapolis 500. Last year, he impressed many as a rookie and as a man who left the comfort of Mediterranean luxury for the speed of a relatively flat rectangle in the middle of the United States. Few... actually, nobody openly speaks openly about chasing the Triple Crown of Motorsports. It has never been an achievement one seeks to obtain but rather it has been something you could only conceivably stumble into. Nobody plans a multi-discipline quest, not in the 21st century, one that has started following the trend of hyper-specialization.
The goal is Formula One. If you are not rich enough or not fortunate enough to be noticed by a manufacture or a sponsor then it is elsewhere, whether that is sports cars or IndyCar or something entirely different. If you are fortunate to make Formula One you stay there as long as you can and earn as many millions of dollars as you can to the point where either you get bored and lose the luster of motorsports or Formula One no longer wants you and a career decision has to be made but even then it is one move to something to get rooted in and spend another decade or so. Few contest all three legs of the Triple Crown of Motorsports let alone win at least two of the three. With Alonso's victory we now have two drivers sitting on a Triple Crown. Alonso needs to win a 500-mile oval race. Juan Pablo Montoya needs to win a 24-hour endurance event. It will have to wait until at least 2019.
Alonso aside, there is a common thread in the results of the prototype classes. His co-drivers, Sébastien Buemi and Kazuki Nakajima, have been Toyota factory drivers since the manufacture returned to Le Mans in 2012 and both came after short stints in Formula One. Ironically, Nakajima's Formula One debut came on one of the first days of a decade's worth of heartbreak for Alonso. The 2007 Brazilian Grand Prix saw the Spaniard enter four points behind McLaren teammate Lewis Hamilton in the World Drivers' Championship. He started fourth, behind the Ferraris of Kimi Räikkönen and Felipe Massa and his teammate Hamilton. While his teammate faltered, Alonso had nothing for the Ferraris. Räikkönen won the race, Massa finished second and Alonso rounded out the podium in third; one point behind Räikkönen in the championship, tied with his teammate but third in the final championship standings on tiebreaker.
After that one grand prix, Nakajima spent two more years at Williams and while he score a fair share of points in his first full season, his second year was a scoreless season and quickly with Toyota withdrawing from the series, Williams cut ties and at 24 years old he was heading back to Japan.
Buemi came up from the brilliant yet toxic Red Bull driver program. While producing a world champion and race winners, Red Bull has also run through young drivers, ending careers with drivers close to 20 years of age than 30. Buemi was in that boat. He spent three years in Formula One driving for Scuderia Toro Rosso, scoring points and beating his teammates consistently. But at 23 years old and with no room to move up and a lot of pressure from below, Buemi was squeezed out.
Without Formula One, Buemi and Nakajima have become two of the most successful and underrated drivers in the world. While it took Buemi seven years to get to the top step at Le Mans, this is his third overall podium in the event and his third place finish in 2014 season came in the year he and Anthony Davidson won the World Endurance Drivers' Championship. Along with his WEC exploits, Buemi has become the early benchmark for Formula E success. Currently, Buemi has the most Formula E victories with 12, a percentage of 29.27% of his entries have been victories, he also leads in pole positions with nine and on top of it all he won the 2015-16 championship. Coincidentally, this victory at Le Mans is Buemi's 12th WEC victory and fifth consecutive dating back to last season.
Nakajima spent a year as a Formula Nippon test driver before he entered the series in 2011 and he won in his second start. He finished second in the championship as a rookie behind André Lotterer and he won win the championship in sophomore season. He would add a second Formula Nippon/Super Formula title in 2014 and he would finish vice-champion again in 2015. In Super GT, Nakajima has five victories in GT500, finished third in the championship in 2013 and he won the 2014 Suzuka 1000km with James Rossiter.
The success of Formula One rejects extended into LMP2 where Jean-Éric Vergne, one of the drivers that forced Buemi out of Formula One only to same the same fate befall the Frenchman at the age of 24, won in the #26 G-Drive Racing Oreca-Gibson with Roman Rusinov and Andrea Pizzitola. Vergne quickly landed in Formula E but while he had pace and picked up respectable results a victory eluded him until his 31st start and his third year in the series. He has made his way to sports cars the last two years and after a year with Manor Racing in WEC, he is three-for-three with G-Drive after taking the class victory in the WEC season opener at Spa-Francorchamps and he won at Monza in the European Le Mans Series. On top of his sports car success, Vergne leads the Formula E championship with Techeetah off the back of three victories this season and in a month he will head to New York City with a Formula E championship within his grasp.
To expand on the LMP2 winning entry, it took nine attempts for Rusinov to get his first class victory and he did it after twice finishing on the LMP2 class podium and once being kicked off it for an illegal fuel tank. Like Vergne, Pizzitola wins in his sophomore year in what has been a budding sports car career for the Frenchman and he will be a driver to keep an eye on for the next five years.
In GTE, both Pro and Am, Porsche dominated with Ford giving the German manufacture a run for its money in the Pro class but while the battle between Frédéric Makowiecki and Sébastien Bourdais will be remembered for a few days it was could not break the stranglehold and Porsche came out on top with a 1-2 finish with the #92 Porsche of Michael Christensen, Kévin Estre and Laurens Vanthoor taking the victory. It is the first Le Mans class victory for all three drivers. It is the first time Estre has finished a Le Mans in four starts. Christensen adds to his 24 Hours of Daytona GT Daytona class victory he picked up last year and his 2014 12 Hours of Sebring GT Le Mans class victory. Vanthoor has a long list of GT racing success. Before this class victory he won overall in the Spa 24 Hours in 2014, the 24 Hours Nürburgring in 2015 and the Dubai 24 Hour in 2016. On top of that Vanthoor has championships in the FIA GT Series, Blancpain Endurance Series, Blancpain GT Series and Intercontinental GT Challenge.
Porsche's victory in GTE-Am ended a three-year winning streak for Ferrari in the class and it is the first time Porsche has won in the class since 2013. Dempsey-Proton Racing was the team to beat with the #88 Porsche taking pole position in class and the #77 Porsche starting third. However, with the #88 Porsche falling out it was pretty much clear sailing for the #77 Porsche of Matt Campbell, Julien Andlauer and Christian Ried with strong runs from the Spirit of Race and Keating Motorsports Ferraris falling flat. Campbell and Andlauer are two of the rising stars in Porsche with Campbell being a Australian Carrera Cup champion and he finished third last year in the Porsche Supercup while Andlauer won the Carrera Cup France championship last year.
After the unpredictability of the last two years at Le Mans, this year stuck to the script. The Toyotas did not stumble. They dominated over the privateer LMP1 entries and even if the Toyotas were to be bitten again the Rebellion Racing entries were seven laps and six laps clear of the LMP2 winning G-Drive Racing Oreca.
Though the Balance of Performance, Equivalence of Technology and stint limits all were in the spotlight for longer than anyone annoyed in this year's race, the 24 Hours of Le Mans found another way to amaze us and we leave with more attention on history than when the race started.
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