10 things we've learned from the 2021 Le Mans 24 Hours so far

Toyota starts this year's race on pole after a blistering Hyperpole effort from Kamui Kobayashi, but its opponents can't be totally discounted, while privateer entry HubAuto will hope its shock pole in the GTE Pro class is no flash in the pan as it prepares to take on the factories.

With the usual flurry of announcements from organiser the Automobile Club de l'Ouest's traditional Friday press conference, there have also been plenty of revelations about the future direction of sportscar racing at Le Mans.

Here are the 10 things we learned in the build-up to the race.

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

Photo by: Marc Fleury

1. Glickenhaus is a genuine contender

Gary Watkins

The extended Le Mans week has provided conclusive proof, if any was needed, that the American Glickenhaus marque is here to compete. The fast-talking boss of the company, Jim Glickenhaus, always said as much, but there were plenty of doubters.

When Olivier Pla went quickest in the official pre-race test last Sunday, it sent a message that big Jim's Italian-based operation is a serious contender. It backed up the team's form at the Monza WEC round back in July when it briefly led the race.

PLUS: Why Glickenhaus should be taken seriously on its Le Mans bow 

The team is confident that it is on top of the reliability issues encountered at the Italian race and also dismissed the idea that it is facing engine problems here. It did run into a turbo glitch, it confirmed, but it occurred on an engine that had already done 45 hours and was due to be changed for the race anyway.

"We're good to go," said Glickenhaus on Friday. "We don't think we quite as fast as Toyota on race pace, but if we run reliably we're gonna get on the podium. And if they have problems, then who knows?"

#8 Toyota Gazoo Racing Toyota GR010 - Hybrid Hypercar, Sébastien Buemi, Kazuki Nakajima, Brendon Hartley

Photo by: Marc Fleury

2. LMH + 8.47 = PDQ

Gary Watkins

Kamui Kobayashi's lap to claim his fourth Le Mans pole surprised everyone, Toyota included. He whizzed around the 8.47-miles of the Circuit de la Sarthe in 3m23.900s to claim top spot in the Hyperpole qualifying session on Thursday aboard the #7 GR010 HYBRID. That's pretty damn quick.

That's significantly quicker than than the 3m30s average race pace targeted by the LMH rules. But that mark is the intended race average, not the ultimate pace of the cars.

The cars in the Hypercar class should really be lapping a little bit quicker than that through the 24 Hours this weekend, because there's been a rules tweak. The cars have been allowed to run at the higher power level permitted for regular WEC races rather than the lower level originally intended for Le Mans, an increase of 27 or so horsepower.

Toyota and Glickenhaus have estimated the increase is worth 1.6s, so our maths suggests the race average should be in the region of 3m28.4s.

PLUS: Can Toyota's #7 crew break its Le Mans curse? 

Kobayashi's time was, of course, a long way shy of his history-making 3m14.791s lap of 2017. But it wasn't far short of the pole marks back in the early days of the WEC as we know it today. Loic Duval's 2013 top spot for Audi was the last by a hybrid with only energy-retrieval on the front axle, like the GR010 HYBRID, and he posted a 3m22.349s.

We're talking about the days when the front of the grid at Le Mans was the realm of the full-house LMP1 weighing 150kg less than the current LMHs. That's progress for you.

#36 Alpine Elf Matmut Alpine A480 - Gibson Hypercar, André Negrão, Nicolas Lapierre, Matthieu Vaxiviere

Photo by: Marc Fleury

3. Alpine can hit the magic dozen

Gary Watkins

Alpine's efforts in the opening three rounds of the WEC with its grandfathered LMP1 car have been hamstrung by its inability to go the same distance between fuel stops as its LMH rivals in the Hypercar class with its grandfathered LMP1 car. It's predicting it can match them at Le Mans this weekend and hit the 12 laps targeted by the rules.

That will be crucial to its chances. The Alpine-Gibson A480 isn't going to be as fast at the Toyota or the Glickenhaus LMHs, that's not the idea of grandfathering. So if it has to make extra pitstops as well, the chances of the marque repeating its 1978 Le Mans victory with the Alpine-Renault A442B look slim.

An Alpine hitting 12 laps has the ability to keep its rivals honest and benefit from any reliability hiccups for the new cars. The A480, remember, formerly raced as the Rebellion R-13 and is a proven machine that's raced at Le Mans three times before.

#38 JOTA Oreca 07 - Gibson LMP2, Antonio Felix Da Costa

Photo by: Marc Fleury

4. Antonio Felix da Costa is on fire!

Gary Watkins

It wouldn't be quite correct to say that Antonio Felix da Costa has been on top of his game all week aboard the British Jota team's #38 LMP2 entry. He made a mistake at Tertre Rouge in first practice on Wednesday and stuck his ORECA-Gibson 07 in the barriers after a collision with a GTE Am Ferrari, but since then he has shown the way to the rest of the LMP2 pack.

He did two laps good enough to top the class in opening qualifying on Wednesday on the way to ending up four tenths clear. Come the short and sharp Hyperpole session on Thursday he blitzed his rivals with a time that put him half a second up, a significant margin in such an ultra-competitive class.

PLUS: The ex-F1 drivers making a name for themselves in Le Mans' underrated class 

The task for the Portuguese is going to be much harder in the race. He's got a former WEC champion in Anthony Davidson alongside him, but also a genuine amateur in Roberto Gonzalez rather than a twenty-something 'super silver' straight off the single-seater ladder.

#72 Hub Auto Racing Porsche 911 RSR - 19 LMGTE Pro, Dries Vanthoor, Alvaro Parente, Maxime Martin

Photo by: Porsche

5. Pole means everything and nothing to HubAuto

James Newbold

The sight of HubAuto Racing atop the timesheets after the six-car Hyperpole session that decided the grid was widely unexpected - not least to the team itself.

Few gave the Taiwanese privateer squad much hope against the factory Porsche, Ferrari and Corvette teams, not least because the 24 Hours is the first event at which the team has run the latest specification Porsche 911 RSR-19 after fielding a Ferrari in GTE Am last year.

PLUS: The Asian underdog taking on the mighty GT factories at Le Mans

Both team and drivers – none of whom had driven the GTE-spec 911 in anger – has faced a huge learning curve and were understandably eager not to get carried away pre-event with talk of an upset.

But after Kevin Estre crashed the #92 factory Porsche at Indianapolis - impacting the wall hard enough to require the car be rebuilt around a new chassis – it was HubAuto’s Dries Vanthoor that claimed top spot, taking advantage of a “risky” set-up change to improve the car’s straight-line speed which made him the only driver able to improve on his time in qualifying practice the previous day.

Corvette’s Nick Tandy, third, reckoned that “generally the track was slower for us in the Hyperpole session”, while Porsche works driver Gianmaria Bruni, fifth, said the delay caused by the red flag for Estre’s shunt had turned it into a lottery: “The guy had the best clean laps or the guy was risking more, because it was already dark, they were getting pole”.

Not that any of it mattered to HubAuto, the hardworking team rightly enjoying its day in the sun, which team boss Morris Chen said had already helped to attract sponsor interest for next year. But with 24 hours still to come, it is under no illusion that the hard work is over.

Team director Phil di Fazio is almost a one-man band on the engineering front - “there’s only myself and one other data engineer, so it’s impossible for us to get through all the data and look at everything,” he told Autosport on Friday - and was all too aware that optimising the car for race performance is “a completely different objective”.

“For every race our goal is to finish in the podium,” Chen said when asked by Autosport if pole had altered its pre-event goal.

Likewise for Di Fazio, nothing has changed: “As a group, we need to be smart and not make mistakes,” he said.

#63 Corvette Racing Chevrolet Corvette C8.R LMGTE Pro of Antonio Garcia, Jordan Taylor, Nicky Catsburg

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

6. Corvette pace is hard to place

James Newbold

It’s not been an easy return to Le Mans for Corvette Racing, after travel restrictions imposed by the pandemic and the resultant shuffling of the IMSA calendar forced it to postpone the debut of its C8.R.

An electrical problem that required an engine and gearbox change on the #63 cost it a large chunk of running on the test day, while Antonio Garcia failed to make the Hyperpole and then suffered a strange shunt in the same car on Thursday in FP3 entering the Porsche Curves.

But Tandy put the sister #64 car into the Hyperpole and clocked the third quickest time, giving pause for thought to those who reckoned the fight would be an all-Porsche vs Ferrari affair.

Perhaps that should come as no surprise given that Corvette has been preparing for this event on the simulator since before the car was launched at the start of 2020 – programme manager Laura Klauser telling Autosport on Thursday that she was “thrilled” with the correlation of its sim models, specifically its new Le Mans aerokit.

Tandy reported that the car was “straight away in a good place” and feels comfortable to drive, although expressed concern that “we’re potentially a bit off” in race runs.

But as Klauser pointed out, “you never know what each and everyone is up to” in practice.

“We’re trying different things out, stuff that we would probably never use in the race but we just need to confirm that for ourselves,” she said. “Until you start running the race that’s when you really find out what the pace is going to be.”

Corvette has benefitted from a pre-event weight break – a reduction of 7kg – and has the driver lineup and operational know-how to deliver a first win since 2015.

“I’m sure they will be fast,” said Bruni. “They were super-fast in Daytona and the other races where you have lots of straightline. I am sure they will be up there.”

#86 GR Racing Porsche 911 RSR - 19 LMGTE Am, brake detail

Photo by: Erik Junius

7. Brake changes may not be golden bullet of 2020

James Newbold

Aston Martin’s victory in last year’s September race after a ding-dong battle with Ferrari owed much to the call not to change brakes. This feat, unprecedented for a GT car at Le Mans, prompted many to investigate the feasibility of a repeat this year, but the manufacturers are keeping their cars very close to hand.

“What I can tell you is brake-wearing depends on several factors, track grip, ambient condition, how much you have to push on the limit so it’s very difficult to predict,” Ferrari GT technical director Ferdinando Cannizzo told Autosport. “It’s still very difficult to say whether we could finish the race without changing brakes. We’ll see how the race will develop and then we will decide.”

Porsche’s head of WEC operations Alexander Stehlig said it had “both scenarios prepared”, adding that “to do a brake change is the more conventional”.

“Last year, I think the Aston had a convenient BoP, and if you don’t need to push so much you are probably in a position to save brakes,” he said.

“I don’t expect it’s a no brainer to do no brake change, but we will see. If there is a safety car interference which we could use for a brake change, we will definitely use it if it’s free of charge.”

Corvette went without brake changes at Daytona in the past two seasons, with Klauser explaining that it was “always a part of the discussion plan”.

“One of the things that we’re proud of is coming up with the ability to do very fast brake changes,” she said. “We’re always ready to go if we need to do something like that, I know they’re probably prepared to go either way.”

#99 Proton Competition Porsche 911 RSR - 19 LMGTE Am, Harry Tincknell, Florian Latorre, Vutthikorn Inthraphuvasak

Photo by: Marc Fleury

8. GTE Am tie-up offers glimpse of LMDh future

James Newbold

It’s rare that the Am class provides a hint of what to expect from a future prototype programme, but the first shoots of the Porsche-Multimatic partnership on the Weissach marque’s 2023 LMDh car are in evidence on Proton’s #99 911-RSR.

A late deal meant a completely different driver lineup to that originally featured on the entry list, with Multimatic Mazda IMSA driver Harry Tincknell gaining his first experience of a Porsche and seeking a third class victory in as many divisions to add to his 2015 LMP2 triumph and GTE Pro win with Aston Martin last year.

“I thought I’d be going for the GTE Am class during my 40s and not in my 20s, but it’s very cool to be here,” quipped Tincknell, who has been paired up with Florian Latorre and Vuttikhorn Inthraphuvasak.

“Three weeks ago, I was going to be commentating on Eurosport, but now I’m here in an RSR that’s quick and it’s got a great chance of doing something in the race because I think across the board, all three drivers in my car are really strong.”

Tincknell was fastest on the test day and narrowly missed out on a spot in hyperpole, aided by the familiar personnel around him having worked with race engineer Vincenzo Libertucci, performance engineer Craig Duncan and vehicle dynamics engineer Lars Ogilvie across Multimatic’s Ford GT and Mazda IMSA programmes.

“The number one mechanic is from Mazda and we also have some ex-Ford GT mechanics, so it’s kind of a completely Multimatic-run car with massive support from Proton and Porsche,” he told Autosport.

With four other cars across the Pro and Am divisions to pool data with, Tincknell is convinced the team can be a “dark horse”.

“I don’t think anyone is really talking about us too much,” he said. “That’s a nice place to be, just slightly under the radar.”

#51 AF Corse Ferrari 488 GTE EVO LMGTE Pro, Alessandro Pier Guidi, James Calado, Come Ledogar

Photo by: Ferrari

9. All-pro GT racing is on its way out at Le Mans

Gary Watkins

The death throes of GTE, which arguably started with the withdrawal of Ford and BMW at the end of the 2018/19 WEC superseason, are going to drag on until the end of 2023. And when it is replaced for 2024, there will be no Pro class.

GT racing at Le Mans and in the WEC will become the realm of the privateer when a new class based on GT3 rules takes over. It's effectively going to be a continuation of the current Am class, but with different cars.

The new direction, reckons FIA Endurance Commission boss Richard Mille, is "in the spirit of what Le Mans has always been with GT".

The reality is that Le Mans and the WEC don't need a manufacturer-based class for GT cars as they head into a bold new era for prototypes with the arrival of LMH and then LMDh in 2023. Don't forget that Porsche and Ferrari, the only full-season entrants in GTE Pro this season, are heading back to the front of the field.

The big question mark this latest development raises is where it leaves Corvette Racing. The disappearance of pro GT racing at Le Mans could ultimately decide whether or not there's a Chevrolet GT3 racer a couple of years down the line.

H24 Hydrogen car

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images

10. Zero emissions contenders for victory are on their way

Gary Watkins

The ACO has been dreaming about having green hydrogen fuel cells on the grid at Le Mans for yonks. It told us at its traditional Friday press conference that there has been a COVID-enforced delay to the arrival of a new class for hydrogen-powered cars until 2025, but it also stated quite categorically that it wants the new cars to be capable of going for outright victory from the get-go.

That's a bold prediction for a technology that is in its infancy, at least as far as squeezing it into a race car goes. There are eight manufacturers around the table talking about the new class and ACO president Pierre Fillon is hopeful that there could be as many as three on the grid circa 2025 with their own fuel cells in a one-make chassis produced by Red Bull Advanced Technologies and ORECA.

Fillon is passionate about hydrogen fuel cells: his road car is powered by one. Is he letting his enthusiasm get the better of him? Only time will tell.

Pierre Fillon, ACO President

Photo by: Marc Fleury