[ds.raikkonen]

What an endurance race, full of attrition and unexpected crashes, worth the 100th edition of the 24 Hours of Le Mans!

The Ferrari 499P did the seemingly impossible by beating the all conquering Toyota GR010 Hybrids even after losing time beached in gravel and in the pits. What's more, both #50 & #51 499Ps finished the race, a testament to Ferrari's thoroughness in their first overall win since 1965!

FERRARI 499P WINS ON DEBUT AT 24 HOURS OF LE MANS

Having been involved a race-long close battle with Toyota, Ferrari came out on top to win the 24 Hours of Le Mans with the Italian marque claiming victory in the world’s most famous endurance race for the first time since 1965. F1Technical's Balázs Szabó reports on the 2023 edition of the historic 24 hours of Le Mans.

Ferrari returned to the top class of endurance racing this year, joining the newly created Hypercar category of the FIA World Endurance Championship with the brand-new Ferrari 499P. The Italian manufacturer lined up with two cars on the grid in the previous three rounds of the 2023 WEC season with the #50 Ferrari driven by Antonio Fuoco, Miguel Molina and Nicklas Nielsen and the #51 Ferrari driven by James Calado, Antonio Giovinazzi and Alessandro Pier Guidi.

Fuoco banked the fastest lap in the half-hour shoot-out to steal the pole position for the centenary edition of the 24 Hours of Le Mans. However, technical problems hit #50 Ferrari which saw Fuoco, Nielsen and Molina lose multiple laps overnight due to an energy recovery system fluid leak.

In the opening part of the race, rain showers had made part of the track slippery, upsetting the strategy of many teams, but forecasts for Sunday promised nice weather with dry and sunny weather welcoming the teams on the second day of the race.

After the problems for the pole-sitting Ferrari, the race turned into a battle between its sister car and the #8 Toyota of Sebastien Buemi, Brendon Hartley and Ryo Hirakawa.

Pier Guidi suffered an off at the first Mulsanne chicane in the evening hours, but the #51 Ferrari managed to come back and build up an advantage of just under a minute in front of the #8 Toyota. The Italian appeared to be clearly the fastest in the evening and in the early morning hours with Toyota unable to react to Ferrari’s speed.

However, the 24 Hours of Le Mans showed why it is referred to as the most challenging motorsport event when Pier Guidi had to perform a power cycle at a pitstop in the 19th hour. Ferrari lost around 50 seconds with the delay and rejoined the track 5 seconds adrift of the leading Toyota.

However, Pier Guidi made a bold move to overtake Buemi and retake the lead with five hours to go. While Ferrari could build up an advantage of around twelve seconds after that, Toyota managed to pick up the pace in the hands of Hartley with the warmer track surface having appeared to favour the Japanese manufacturer’s GR010 Hybrid.

With Toyota not giving up their chances of another Le Mans victory, Hirakawa was driving flat out when he took over the car from Hartley. However, the young Japanese driver lost it under braking at Arnage, and hit the barriers. Although he was able to get the damaged car to the pits, the #8 Toyota lost almost two minutes with the incident and the repair job.

Following this incident, Ferrari had their hands on the trophy, but they endured another scare in the dying minutes of the legendary endurance race as Pier Guidi had to perform another power cycle with 23 minutes to go.

Making no mistakes in the final phase of the 2023 edition of the historic Le Mans race, Calado, Pier Guidi and Giovinazzi delivered Ferrari its first outright Le Mans win since Masten Gregory and Jochen Rindt took top honours in 1965 with the victory becoming the Italians’ tenth overall victory of the historic 24 hours of Le Mans.

Today’s race marked Ferrari’s return to endurance racing after having withdrawn from Le Mans to focus on Formula One in 1973.

Behind the Toyota of Hartley, Hirakawa and Buemi finished the #2 Cadillac driven by Earl Bamber, Alex Lynn and Richard Westbrook with the #3 Chip Ganassi Racing-run car of Sebastien Bourda, Renger van der Zande and Scott Dixon. The #50 Ferrari of Fuoco, Molina and Nielsen finished the race in P5.

The No. 34 Inter Europol Competition Oreca scored the LM P2 Class win with Jakub Smiechowski, Albert Costa, and Fabio Scherer driving the car and helping the outfit to become the first polish team to win a Le Mans 24 category.

Finishing 21 seconds behind in second in LM P2 was Team WRT, with drivers Rui Andrade, Louis Deletraz, and Robert Kubica. The Duqueine Team with drivers Neel Jani, Rene Binder, and Nicolas Pino finished on the podium, just 45 seconds behind the winning team.

In the LM GTE Class, the No. 33 Corvette Racing team earned the victory with Nicky Catsburg, Ben Keating, and Nicolas Varrone behind the wheel. The No. 25 Aston Martin finished second, driven by Ahmad Al Harthy, Michael Dinan, and Charlie Eastwood. The podium was completed by the No. 86 Porsche 911 with Michael Wainwright, Benjamin Barker, and Riccardo Pera.

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I want to be cautiously optimistic but WEC had exactly the sort of race they hoped for and what a way to bring the curtain down on the centenary!

Amazing to see a historic marque taking part (and winning too) at the highest level of sportscar racing. And kudos too to all the other manufacturers that have entered the Hypercar class. Great to see the many different iterations on the regulations, the Peugeot entry being the most visually striking of all.

I must say it was heartening to see that beyond the top two tussle between Ferrari and Toyota, the other manufacturers in the hypercar category seemed to have decent outings. Cadillac did really well! I hope to see more strong entries from US OEMs, it's good to see. Brilliant effort too from Glickenhaus given they haven't got a massive OEM level infrastructure behind them. I think Peugeot had a creditable outing for such a radical car, I would be remiss if I didn't admit it could go the way of the ill fated but highly interesting front wheel drive Nissan LMP1 entry of years past. Must be strange to see a Porsche effort have middling results at the top category in Le Mans. Makes me wonder what the break up is between LMH entries and LMDH entries amongst the grid.

Finally, I have to say, bravo to the NASCAR entry for the Garage 56 entry. I know NASCAR gets a lot of stick for it's relatively rudimentary appearing nature, but none of us racing fans can deny that it's a childhood What-If come true seeing a big old stock car amongst the GTE and prototype racers. If it looked out of place, it sure knocked some jaws loose with it's pace. I'm just so friggin' happy to see that in today's corporate racing era we can still see entries like this where you just have racers have a crack at it. I'd really like to see more entries like this, more cross pollination of racing talent. What a line up the Chevrolet had, an F1 champion, a Le Mans champion and a NASCAR champion. This is what racing is all about! Let some of those F1 drivers have a stab at other disciplines.

Credit where credit is due to the FIA and the various organisers for making sure Le Mans didn't clash with Monaco or the Indy 500. These 3 blue chip events should be kept separate on the calendar and drivers Should be allowed to have a crack at the Triple Crown.

Would be great to see more of the teams in F1 have a stab at the Hypercar category. I would love for it to have a resurgence much the same way Group C was a halcyon era for sports car racing.

[ds.raikkonen]

Originally Posted by ads11

Must be strange to see a Porsche effort have middling results at the top category in Le Mans. Makes me wonder what the break up is between LMH entries and LMDH entries amongst the grid.

Ferrari, Toyota, Peugeot were all LMH hybrid spec, which allows construction of chassis and hybrid system from ground up with restrictions on downforce and overall power output. Also hybrid system is on the front axle and can only be deployed beyond a certain speed (I think 150 km/h).

Glickenhaus, Vanwall were LMH non-hybrid spec.

Porsche (Penske/Jota/Proton) and Cadillac were LMDH spec which have shared parts like chassis, gearbox, hybrid system.

Finally, I have to say, bravo to the NASCAR entry for the Garage 56 entry. I know NASCAR gets a lot of stick for it's relatively rudimentary appearing nature, but none of us racing fans can deny that it's a childhood What-If come true seeing a big old stock car amongst the GTE and prototype racers. If it looked out of place, it sure knocked some jaws loose with it's pace. I'm just so friggin' happy to see that in today's corporate racing era we can still see entries like this where you just have racers have a crack at it. I'd really like to see more entries like this, more cross pollination of racing talent. What a line up the Chevrolet had, an F1 champion, a Le Mans champion and a NASCAR champion. This is what racing is all about! Let some of those F1 drivers have a stab at other disciplines.

Definitely, F1 drivers (current, not ex) should compete in WEC to prove their mettle, but with the current 2023 schedule they don't have the time to do anything else.

This is what I like about the WEC, it is so diverse in so many ways, especially as compared to F1, which has mostly similar cars. I miss the old Diesel Vs Petrol, Open Vs Closed cockpit LMP1 and F1 Vs Le Mans champions era (Tom 'Mr. Le Mans' Christensen Vs F1 trio of Peugeot). Though the innovative NASCAR entry qualify well, it was nowhere in the race, though 1st in its 1 car class Wonder how they got hold of JB! Mike Rockenfeller would have remembered his dominant open cockpit diesel Audi days.

[McLaren Rulez]

Time to fire their incompetent F1 team and hand that operation over to this crew.

[ds.raikkonen]

Originally Posted by McLaren Rulez

Time to fire their incompetent F1 team and hand that operation over to this crew.

Wonder whether that would help, I think they have changed more team principals than any other team (probably in any racing discipline).

It started when they let go of Alonso when Mattiachi was in charge. Even a sleepy Kimi could have done wonders had he been coached and guided well, like Jean Todt or Ross Brawn could have done to Eddie Irvine/Barrichello.

But the level of calmness demonstrated by Pier Guidi's race engineer and the pit crew during the 'power cycle' debacle 24 min shy of the finish was amazing. It was like watching the Ferrari of old when they used to have that lazy elegance and precision to pit MSC 4 times in France and yet win the race!

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Originally Posted by ds.raikkonen

Ferrari, Toyota, Peugeot were all LMH hybrid spec, which allows construction of chassis and hybrid system from ground up with restrictions on downforce and overall power output. Also hybrid system is on the front axle and can only be deployed beyond a certain speed (I think 150 km/h).

Glickenhaus, Vanwall were LMH non-hybrid spec.

Porsche (Penske/Jota/Proton) and Cadillac were LMDH spec which have shared parts like chassis, gearbox, hybrid system.

Thanks, I wasn't sure about the Vanwall and Glickenhaus. Kudos to the latter for doing that well purely on ICE power. I initially chalked down the Porsche's being shown up for being LMDH vs the full fat LMH cars but that's negated by the fact that Cadillac with their own LMDH was right up there. I think overall the organisers can take a great deal of satisfaction from the fact that the specs all seemed to match up well on race day with no obvious disadvantage apparent to me between how folks chose to go about their Hypercar entry.

Definitely, F1 drivers (current, not ex) should compete in WEC to prove their mettle, but with the current 2023 schedule they don't have the time to do anything else.

I think this is a deliberate move by the FIA, instigated as always by the FOM, to do so. In the Bernie days you saw how deliberately they'd schedule Monaco to clash with Le Mans and/or Indy. F1 has always been a closed shop and they don't like sharing their toys with anyone, and this is coming from a lifelong F1 fan (albeit heavily jaded as is normal for anyone who follows that circus long enough). I think Hulkenberg was the last driver to cross compete and was extolling the virtues of doing so before the team bosses made sure that didn't happen. The bloated calendar itself is a joke but whatever, money talks and Liberty want to squeeze every last dollar out of the fan base, and happily take the largesse of the dictators for their vanity project tracks.

Originally Posted by McLaren Rulez

Time to fire their incompetent F1 team and hand that operation over to this crew.

I can't remember which famous former driver said this (think it was Gilles Villeneuve) but it's a telling quote for a reason (I'm likely paraphrasing a bit):

Before you move to Ferrari, you look at the team and all the facilities they have available and you think, how aren't they winning everything?
Then you move to Ferrari and you think, how on earth do they win anything at all?

Originally Posted by ds.raikkonen

Wonder whether that would help,...It was like watching the Ferrari of old when they used to have that lazy elegance and precision to pit MSC 4 times in France and yet win the race!

I think a great deal of people don't quite realise just how political the Scuderia are. The reason they go through all those team principals is much like Renaissance Italy, you've got a dozen different warring factions within the whole enterprise, and that's before you've extended the influence of the Fiat group and by extension the Agnellis.

The reason Ferrari did so well under Michael is because the deal Michael made with Luca Di Montezemolo, and the strategic vision he had to realise this, was that Michael needed to insulate the racing operations entirely from the Italian factions, be that Fiat company execs, or the family itself. He brought his own people in, but crucially the leadership triumvirate of himself, Brawn and Todt. Todt was the interface with the higher ups, Brawn the one in charge of all technical affairs and hey presto, suddenly a team with all the resources that Ferrari traditionally have starts working like a juggernaut. All that crumbled the moment parts of the triumvirate left or that closed circuit was broken. Think Montezemolo bristling at his loss of influence and determined to get his own person in, in Kimi, prematurely pushed out Michael. Soon enough Ross went to Honda and Todt retired and you had Ferrari return to how they've always been. An emotional rollercoaster of an outfit.

I think a large part of the success of this Le Mans outfit is that it's run by AF Corsa, the outfit that's traditionally run "factory" Ferrari's in the GT class in sportscar racing. I don't think they're in house the same way the Scuderia is, though I could be wrong. I won't discount how much sanity and clarity of purpose that comes with being even slightly detached from the mayhem of Maranello. It won't surprise me in the slightest if there's a run of success, that the powers that be within Exor take more of an involved approach in the team and things starting to unravel thereafter.

[ds.raikkonen]

Originally Posted by ads11

I initially chalked down the Porsche's being shown up for being LMDH vs the full fat LMH cars but that's negated by the fact that Cadillac with their own LMDH was right up there. I think overall the organisers can take a great deal of satisfaction from the fact that the specs all seemed to match up well on race day with no obvious disadvantage apparent to me between how folks chose to go about their Hypercar entry.

WEC has tried hard to keep the playing field level within a class. Balance of Performance (BoP) has favoured some manufacturers at some events and negated the advantage of some in other events. Its quite complicated, haven't got my head round fully in this aspect. Toyota mentioned that a squirrel stuck in one of the ducts caused them to lose performance massively.

But I am glad that other manufacturers like BMW will also compete in 2024, thanks to the reduced cost to compete and also the increasing road relevance of the machines.

Originally Posted by ads11

I think Hulkenberg was the last driver to cross compete

The Hulk competed with the Porsche factory team back in 2015 while also with Force India and won, those hybrid machines were rocketships! This year's Ferrari 499P did just 342 laps in 24 hours whereas Hulk's 919 did nearly 400 back in 2015! Those LMP1 cars really were in a different league, and obviously much more expensive to build than today's top dog LMH machines.

Alonso competed with Toyota in 2018 while also with McLaren and won! Mega drive

Originally Posted by ads11

Then you move to Ferrari and you think, how on earth do they win anything at all?

Exactly, the Scuderia has become a joke in recent years with botched up pit stops, horrendous strategic calls etc. They have become 'too Italian to win' anything

Originally Posted by ads11

I think a large part of the success of this Le Mans outfit is that it's run by AF Corsa, the outfit that's traditionally run "factory" Ferrari's in the GT class in sportscar racing. I don't think they're in house the same way the Scuderia is, though I could be wrong.

AF Corse regularly used to run Ferrari GT2 and GTE machines. This was the first time they were managing the factory team. Not sure what part they're handling in the LMH category. But they did a fine job!

Coincidentally, Ferrari's last overall win at Le Mans also came at the hands of one of their customer teams, as their 'factory' machines had broken down during the race (sounds familiar?).

It was quite a scare for them as Ford had entered looking for blood but then all the GT40s suffered issues and were out of the race. Ferrari would have looked really stupid not even able to finish the event where they had competed for such a long time! I think that customer team was American, there is a great video on YouTube of John Ficarra telling that amazing story on VinWiki channel.

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Originally Posted by ds.raikkonen

WEC has tried hard to keep the playing field level within a class. Balance of Performance (BoP) has favoured some manufacturers at some events and negated the advantage of some in other events. Its quite complicated, haven't got my head round fully in this aspect.

The thing with balance of performance is that by it's very nature it is a complicated endeavour that's both meant to encourage diversity of outcomes (to keep OEMs engaged with their differing solutions) whilst also ensuring some level of parity (to keep fans engaged). The sobering thought is this. A couple of years ago it looked like we had just that in the LMP1 rules revamp where you had Porsche, Audi, Nissan, Toyota enter with the promise of others too but look how that ended up. Those LMP1 cars became nearly as expensive as F1 outings and sure enough you saw the boards at Porsche and Audi withdraw (with no small impact from Dieselgate too), and then instantly up the volume on their F1 entry efforts once the headwinds of the Dieselgate aftermath on the VAG had calmed down. So there's got to be a word of caution to this new dawn in sportscar racing.

But I am glad that other manufacturers like BMW will also compete in 2024, thanks to the reduced cost to compete and also the increasing road relevance of the machines... Those LMP1 cars really were in a different league, and obviously much more expensive to build than today's top dog LMH machines.

I think there's quiet optimism precisely due to the presence of the LMDH spec rules that we won't end up with the top class fizzling out in a cost war like it did the last time. The Daytona Hybrids IMSA specified ultimately won out if you think about it, whereas LMP hybrids ultimately were too grand for their own good.

Alonso competed with Toyota in 2018 while also with McLaren and won! Mega drive

While I don't begrudge Fernando his Le Mans win, I'm still of the opinion that Toyota's 5 wins were very much in a field of none, there was no real competitor to it in LMP1. Sure, they came agonisingly close in the years prior when you still had serious efforts from the VW Group siblings but there's a reason that the Toyota wins don't have anywhere near the cultural cache of Mazda's Group C era win, what with it's madcap rotary engine.

Exactly, the Scuderia has become a joke in recent years with botched up pit stops, horrendous strategic calls etc. They have become 'too Italian to win' anything

There's definitely recency bias in terms of a generation of motorsports fans coming of age in the Schumacher era and thinking that was par for the course, completely forgetting that before Michael came along the team hadn't won anything in decades. What we see from Ferrari in the last 15 years is absolutely them reverting to type. Schumacher's Ferrari were the anomaly, not the norm.

AF Corse regularly used to run Ferrari GT2 and GTE machines. This was the first time they were managing the factory team. Not sure what part they're handling in the LMH category. But they did a fine job!

The way I've always viewed factory efforts such as AF Corse is to think of them as factory partners in the mould Red Bull were the Honda partners or Mclaren were Mercedes partners in the early Aughts, and so on. I think strategic decisions are driven by the team leadership and not as much from corporate on the side of the OEM if that makes sense.