It's the 100th anniversary of Le Mans. They cannot let a non-European manufacturer win this "historical race".
The fact that the GR010 carried 13kg of extra weight over 24 hours, and ended within the same lap as the winning car just shows how good it is. Mind you, that's 1.3% the total weight of the car. Imagine every 100 seconds (less than half of a lap), you lose 1.3s because of the weight. Over 24 hours that's almost 20 minutes lost! If the two were on the same weight limit the Toyota would have lapped the Ferraris six times!
There's just no way that for the same amount of energy allowance, a race car can find 1.3% pace on aerodynamics alone. That's 2.7s per lap at Le Mans. Not even Red Bull in F1 has that kind of aero advantage. Toyota was doomed to lose from the beginning and should have withdrawn in protest.
Correct. The BoP absolutely annihilated us. However, if there was one other manufacturer that deserved to win, it was Ferrari. So I'm truly happy for them as they deserve the win the most. They were the most competitive and in races prior to Le Mans they were a bit scary.
But,
They cannot let a non-European manufacturer win this "historical race".
this is not true. Had Porsche or Peugeot won it, I'd wholeheartedly agree. But they shat the bed later and Ferrari was the one who capitalized on it all.
A couple of things happened (I watched the entire race... o__o).
The number 7 car (poor Kamui) got their asses rammed into them by a LMP2 in a slow zone, which was caused by a fast moving Ferrari... how ironic... It is important to note that this car led some portions of the race and was incredibly fast (read as, they could have won it all), but it unfortunately retired.
The number 8 is the more shocking one. They were more dominant than the number 7 car throughout the race and led for a significant amount of time. Many times did the number 8 whiz past the Ferrari on merit. Towards the later stages of the race, Toyota was leading by around 20 seconds... until a pesky squirrel (rumored to have been paid by Ferrari 😜) was hit by the number 8 car and gifted them with a lot of front end damage. Their pace wasn't the same but even then they made it towards the front thanks to a blistering drive from Brendon Hartley.
Now here is where it gets crazy. Buemi was driving like hell throughout the night, and Hartley (who did that amazing drive) did 4 stints in a row after Buemi. Then, Toyota gave the car to Ryo Hirakawa, the Toyota prodigy. In the WEC, there's a rule saying that if you violate track limits more than 10 times throughout the race, then you'll get a penalty. After Hartley, they could have given the car to Hirakawa for a few stints and let Buemi finish it off, however Buemi was close to the limit in violations of track limits, which then they would have incurred a penalty. The thing with Ryo is that he seems nervous still, even after being dominant in SuperGT and having experience with the GR010. He's a bit unpolished, and needs work, but he'll get there.
Hirakawa drove like hell and was inching closer to the Ferrari that was 30 seconds ahead... but in the closing hours he spun out into the gravel, effectively rendering Toyota's chances of winning six in a row, to a near zero. This pushed Hirakawa back approximately 2.5 minutes behind the leading Ferrari. Had Buemi not gone off track limits so many times, the car should have been given to him to finish the race.
But, even with Hirakawa's mistakes there were two instances where the Ferrari completely shut down when they pitted, needing a full system restart in order to get the car moving. The first restart took a 1 minute and the second time (where there were only ~20 minutes to go) took away another 30 seconds. Had Hirakawa not made that mistake (EVEN with the squirrel destroying the front-end of the number 8 and taking them away from the lead) we would have won number six (in a row, and of all time for Toyota), plain and simple.
The Ferrari had great one lap pace but long-term race pace was good for the Toyotas. Though, this time around the Toyotas struggled a bit more in the rain, and shockingly, the Peugeots were the fastest during this time. SHOCKING, right?! They were the slowest of the cars following LMH regulations and they led a few dozen laps in Le Mans, it's as if they sniffed some cocaine and only the lord knows how the Peugeots were able to find pace, excluding their favorable BoP of course. But it was during this period of rain where we come to a problem... there were two occasions where Toyota absolutely fumbled the strategy calls with regard to tires, which left them mid-pack, borderline nearing the tail end of the Hypercar field. Toyota tried taking risks but they made Ferrari-level errors, while Ferrari had a near perfect race.
To close, if we were to consider the errors that Toyota made ONLY (and excluding bad luck), Toyota would have won the race. If we were to consider the bad luck Toyota had and if Ryo Hirakawa did not make that mistake, Toyota would have STILL won the race.
What happened here was a solid 1-2 punch of mistakes and horrifying levels of bad luck, which cost Toyota to lose the centenary edition of the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
If we're honest though, the squirrel and Ryo's mistake sealed Toyota's fate in losing the race. Now, it depends on which one you think is worse, as one could argue that the squirrel hitting the number 8's front end was just pure bad luck and Ryo shouldn't have made that mistake, while another person can argue that the winning Ferrari also made a similar mistake by going into the gravel earlier in the race (happened right before the number 7 car had to retire) so Ryo was just human after all, and the squirrel hitting the number 8 was the real culprit in making them lose. I personally think it was a combination of the two.
All in all, I was severely upset, but over a day has passed and I'm over it. The BoP was a bit bad and did benefit Ferrari a little bit more, because without the BoP it would have been a crime scene with the Toyotas 1-2 laps ahead. Like I said before, the new EVO package has made the GR010 a world-beating monster, and it required ungodly levels of BoP to bring it down to other teams. With that said, there were many opportunities for us to win it because we were the best team and we easily had the best car, but combined with mistakes on our end, and some horrible bad luck, the win fell in the lap of the Ferrari team.
I have to say it was a fantastic race in terms of the racing product, even if we didn't win it. I desperately wanted Toyota to win the 100th anniversary of Le Mans, but we can win it on the 100th
running of the 24 Hours of Le Mans soon (there were no Le Mans race in 1936 and from 1940-1948). What I will say is that Toyota is even more dedicated than ever to fight, and I don't think we'll see them leave the WEC for a
very long time.
