Why Toyota's Le Mans victory was not as simple as it looked

On the face of it, Toyota had an easy run to victory in the 89th running of the Le Mans 24 Hours with its new Le Mans Hypercar. The best of its GR010 HYBRIDS finished four laps up on its nearest rival in the form of Alpine's old LMP1 car. The reality was that over the latter hours of the race the Japanese manufacturer was fighting an issue that threatened not just its chances of victory, but to relegate its two cars perhaps as far as the lower reaches of the top 20. 

That Toyota was able to celebrate a fourth Le Mans victory in a row was the result of some outside-the-box thinking. And that Kamui Kobayashi, Mike Conway and Jose Maria Lopez were finally able to get a victory on the board in the big race after years of heartbreak was at least partially down to the fact that their GR010 was hit later than the sister car over the course of the double-points round of the World Endurance Championship last weekend. 

The Sword of Damocles hanging over Toyota was the same, or very similar, to the fuel pick-up issue that had hit the #8 Toyota of Sebastien Buemi, Kazuki Nakajima and Brendon Hartley during the previous round of the WEC at Monza in July, as well as the #7 car in free practice. In Italy the solution to the problem was the replacement of the collector in the fuel tank. The loss of time last month was almost an hour. Toyota reckoned it could have completed the change this time in around 45 minutes. It wouldn't really have made much difference. The Toyotas would have finished outside the top 10 with that kind of delay, just outside if the mechanics got snappy and well outside if they didn't. 

It would, said TGRE technical director Pascal Vasselon, have been a "showstopper" for the team. "Game over" was the other term he used. Remember the new breed of LMH machinery racing in the Hypercar division, the new name for the top class in the WEC, is significantly slower than before, or more pertinently only four or so seconds faster each lap than the best of the LMP2 prototypes in their latest downgraded specification. That's different to 2017, when the winning Porsche 919 Hybrid was able to spend more than an hour in the pits having a motor-generator unit replaced and still come back to overhaul the best of the P2s to take the lead an hour before the end of a race of attrition. 

“It was a similar problem to Monza, but in Monza we could not fix it,” explained Vasselon. "Many people in the team have been quite creative to fix the problem.

“The big difference this time was that we found a way to work around it without stopping for an hour in the garage, which would have been a showstopper. We knew stopping would have been game over for the win, which is why we did everything we could not to do it.”

Toyota revealed that it had traced the Monza problem to contaminated fuel, or at least it believed it had, in the lead-up to last weekend's race. The contamination, it explained, was a result of the way it handles or manages the fuel within the team. This contamination was blocking the filter in the collector at the bottom of the tank and causing the pick-up problem.

#7 Toyota Gazoo Racing Toyota GR010 - Hybrid Hypercar, Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi, Jose Maria Lopez

Photo by: TOYOTA GAZOO Racing

Whether the problem was identical to the one at Monza, Toyota wouldn't reveal, or perhaps couldn't. “We have to look into more details to give a clearer picture,” said Vasselon.

Whatever, it made for a nerve-wracking end to the race, particularly for the crew of the winning car who've borne the brunt of Toyota's misfortune in recent years. It was only two years ago, of course, that #7 lost victory with an hour to go courtesy of an incorrectly wired tyre pressure sensor. 

“This race is never easy even if you are out leading on your own, you are still worried all the way to the end,” said Conway. “The last six hours we had something on the car that could have been a real big problem. Luckily the team came up with a solution to keep us going. All credit to the team for figuring that out, and making sure we could get a 1-2 is pretty special in the circumstances.”

"The big difference this time was that we found a way to work around it without stopping for an hour in the garage. We knew stopping would have been game over for the win, which is why we did everything we could not to do it." Pascal Vasselon, Toyota

Conway and his team-mates led for all but 22 of the 371 laps they completed last weekend. That makes it sound as though they were dominant, which isn't quite right.

The two Toyota crews were actually amazingly evenly matched. On the averages, car #7 was a tad more than one hundredth quicker than its sister over the 50 fastest laps, six hundredths over 100 and just under two tenths if the sample was increased to 200 laps. 

If the #7 car wasn't favourite after Kobayashi plonked a Toyota on pole for the fourth time in five years by three tenths from Hartley and 1.7s from the Alpine, it was within a few hundred metres of the race going green. It had rained in the run-up to the 4pm start and, after two laps spent behind the safety car with the clock ticking, Buemi was tipped into a spin at the Dunlop Chicane. 

Tipped is actually the wrong word. Bashed would be better, given the force with which the locked-up Glickenhaus of Olivier Pla struck the back of the Toyota as he turned into the left-hander. Buemi dropped down the order and then to the back of the 61-car field when he had to stop to reboot the car's electronics after the hit. The Swiss was 50th at the end of lap three, and he and his team-mates were playing catch up for most of the rest of the race. 

Start, #8 Toyota Gazoo Racing Toyota GR010 - Hybrid Hypercar, Sebastien Buemi, Kazuki Nakajima, Brendon Hartley and #7 Toyota Gazoo Racing Toyota GR010 - Hybrid Hypercar, Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi, Jose Maria Lopez

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

The #8 Toyota for once had the lion's share of the issues to hit the team at Le Mans, though there was also some good luck involved given the severity of the hit from the Glickenhaus-Pipo 007 LMH. Vasselon admitted afterwards that the absence of damage after the impact directly on the left-rear wheel was "quite a good surprise".

There were a series of further delays for #8 car crew early on. Buemi had a side-to-side clash with an LMP2 car that damaged the right rear wheel, while Hartley was far enough behind the sister car when the safety car came out for the first time to get caught behind a different one of the three course vehicles deployed on the 8.47-mile Circuit de la Sarthe. That came with the loss of a minute. Later on, the car needed a replacement "passenger's side" door after a scoop was damaged for an unknown reason. 

Buemi's fightback after his first-lap delays was rapid. He'd reached position 10 after the same number of laps when he ducked into the pits to change from wet-weather Michelins to slicks and was third by the end of the opening hour. Second position, 55s down on Conway, was his three laps later. 

The gap came down to just six seconds when Conway pitted twice within the space of eight laps with a deflating left-rear tyre either side of the two-hour mark. A more representative margin of a minute was restored when Buemi made his next stop, which grew to two after Hartley took over just before the first safety car was called. 

The chasing Toyota briefly got within 20s when the leader stopped as the safety car came out for the fourth and final time more or less bang on eight hours. Two hours later, Buemi was only 19s behind Conway when he pitted two laps earlier than the usual 13 the Toyota could manage on its energy allocation. The team said it was "chasing a fuelling problem", though the car quickly returned to its normal routine. 

Four hours later, #8 needed a new nose after a drop in aero performance as a result of minor damage. An hour after that, the fuel issue returned and Buemi could only manage a series of short stints. The race was as good as over. The second-placed car's stints fluctuated in length thereafter, but only once would it go the full 13 laps.

The fuel problem hit the winning Toyota later. Kobayashi was hauled out of the car after two stints rather than the usual three shortly before 10am on Sunday so that a fully briefed Lopez could take over.

#7 Toyota Gazoo Racing Toyota GR010 - Hybrid Hypercar, Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi, Jose Maria Lopez

Photo by: TOYOTA GAZOO Racing

The second-placed car dropped off the lead lap shortly after midday when a laptop was plugged in during the pitstops. The gap grew to two laps when Toyota brought the two cars into the pits in the last half hour for a precautionary top-up of fuel and to get them into line-astern for the photo finish. 

The ingenuity of which Toyota boasted was enough to ensure that the pair of GR010s never came under threat from the rest of the Hypercar field. The Alpine-Gibson A480 grandfathered P1 car shared by Nicolas Lapierre, Matthieu Vaxiviere and Andre Negrao managed to hit the 12 laps between pitstops that the team believed would be key to its chances. 

The Signatech-run team achieved 12 laps courtesy of an increase in fuel capacity that the A480 needed to accommodate at least some of the energy allocation it couldn't fit in the LMP2-size tank at the opening three 2021 WEC rounds, as well as some work with engine supplier Gibson and lifting and coasting by the drivers. But it didn't turn out to be the silver bullet the team had hoped because the Toyotas (when healthy) were able to go at least 13 laps between stops. 

“For sure third position for the first time entering in the Hypercar category is pretty amazing. Toyota was just stronger than us. We have to accept it.” Nicolas Lapierre

It wouldn't be entirely correct to say that the Toyotas were just too quick for the Alpine to have a chance. That's because there was a disparity in the pace of the Alpine drivers. Veteran Lapierre was only half a second off, but Vaxiviere and Negrao were more than two seconds in arrears. 

The ORECA design that started life as the Rebellion R-13 was a lap down after six hours and then fell another in arrears in hour eight when Vaxiviere spun at the first Mulsanne chicane thanks to getting on the wet part of the track lapping a couple of GT cars. Four minutes were lost while the car was lifted out of the gravel. 

The delay dropped the French car behind the best of the Glickenhaus 007s, the car shared by Olivier Pla, Pipo Derani and Franck Mailleux and, briefly, the winning LMP2 WRT ORECA. The American manufacturer's cars became more competitive through the race and the best of them was able to stay on terms with the Alpine until the 20th hour. 

A podium was mission accomplished for the Alpine set-up, particularly Signatech at a time when boss Philippe Sinault is trying to lure the Renault brand into a permanent presence in the WEC sometime down the with an LMH or an LMDh prototype. But Lapierre conceded that they weren't really in the game last weekend. 

#36 Alpine Elf Matmut Alpine A480 - Gibson Hypercar, Andre Negrao, Nicolas Lapierre, Matthieu Vaxiviere

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

“We expected a bit higher, but to be honest there wasn't  a lot more that we could have done,” he said. “For sure third position for the first time entering in the Hypercar category is pretty amazing.

“Toyota was just stronger than us. We have to accept it.”

Hypercar race pace

Average of top 10 fastest laps

1 Kamui Kobayashi (#7) 3m28.867s
2 Sebastien Buemi (#8) 3m29.081s
3 Brendon Hartley (#8) 3m29.275s
4 Jose Maria Lopez (#7) 3m29.475s
5 Kazuki Nakajima (#8) 3m29.816s
6 Mike Conway (#7) 3m29.845s

Average of top 30 fastest laps

1 Kamui Kobayashi (#7) 3m29.715s
2 Sebastien Buemi (#8) 3m29.854s
3 Brendon Hartley (#8) 3m30.131s
4 Jose Maria Lopez (#7) 3m30.163s
5 Mike Conway (#7) 3m30.423s
6 Nicolas Lapierre (#36) 3m30.474s

Average of top 50 fastest laps

1 Kamui Kobayashi (#7) 3m30.328s
2 Sebastien Buemi (#8) 3m30.402s
3 Jose Maria Lopez (#7) 3m30.673s
4 Mike Conway (#7) 3m30.780s
5 Brendon Hartley (#8) 3m30.797s
6 Nicolas Lapierre (#36) 3m30.847s

Glickenhaus satisfied with Le Mans debut

Glickenhaus struggled at the beginning of the race. It didn't look like its two Pipo-engined Le Mans Hypercars had anything for Alpine, let alone Toyota. Yet through Sunday morning the #708 car driven by Olivier Pla, Pipo Derani and Franck Mailleux battled with the French car for the final place on the podium. 

Glickenhaus was all at sea early in the race. The 007 LMH struggles in low-grip scenarios and the car had run for barely two hours in the wet before 4pm on Saturday afternoon. The rain was a double whammy for the Italian-based operation because a field of 60-odd cars running around on grooved tyres removed much of the rubber laid down over the preceding week. It explains why the two cars got better and better over the course of the 24 hours. 

#708 Glickenhaus Racing Glickenhaus 007 LMH Hypercar, Luis Felipe Derani, Franck Mailleux, Olivier Pla

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

Derani and co were a match for the drivers of the Alpine-Gibson A480 over the second half of the race. The battle between the two cars was ultimately resolved by a spot of bad luck for Glickenhaus early in the 20th hour. 

A full course yellow, one of only a handful in the race, was called just as the Glickenhaus with Mailleux at the wheel needed to pit for fuel. The team had two options: come for a so-called emergency pitstop that allows a five-second splash of fuel or push on for another lap in the hope that the track stayed yellow. 

It chose the latter only for the FCY to quickly disappear. Mailleux's lap took more than five minutes, handing the Alpine a hand advantage of two or so minutes that it retained to the end. 

There was only limited disappointment in the Glickenhaus comp, however, after both cars took the chequered flag, the #709 entry of Romain Dumas, Richard Westbrook and Ryan Briscoe three laps in arrears of the sister car.

"We are super happy," said Luca Ciancetti, technical director of the Podium Advanced Technologies operation behind the Glickenhaus team. "You have to be if you get two new cars to the finish. Romain has been coming to Le Mans for 20 years and said he has never seen something like this."

#709 Glickenhaus Racing Glickenhaus 007 LMH Hypercar, Ryan Briscoe, Richard Westbrook, Romain Dumas

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images