How the 'moral winners' lost Le Mans

The Toyota Le Mans 24 Hours curse struck again. Only this time it didn't prevent the Japanese manufacturer from winning the race. Nor completing a predictable one-two.

But it did mean that the moral winners last weekend, Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi and Jose Maria Lopez, lost out to Sebastien Buemi, Fernando Alonso and Kazuki Nakajima.

The #7 Toyota TS050 HYBRID with Lopez at the wheel looked home and dry with a shade over an hour of the 2018/19 World Endurance Championship finale to go. He held an entirely deserved lead of over two minutes when the car's tyre pressure sensors system indicated a right front puncture.

What the electronics were saying was the offending tyre needed to be changed, and it was, only for it to become clear very quickly that the deflating Michelin was actually the left rear.

That meant another slow lap around the 8.47-mile Circuit de la Sarthe and the loss of the lead to Nakajima before it had been completed.

All four tyres were then changed when Lopez came in for the second time in two laps, the cumulative loss of time leaving the Argentinian just over 60 seconds behind the #8 car with 59 minutes to go. The chance of victory had gone, though Lopez did get the gap down to under 50s before the cars made their final stops.

He needed less fuel than Nakajima and rejoined 22s down, but Toyota's rules of engagement in the WEC mean the result is frozen at the last round of pitstops.

Lopez edged towards Nakajima over the final stages, but ended up 16.9s behind after 24 hours and 385 laps of racing.

"I feel for my team-mates who are actually more than team-mates, they are friends. They would have deserved the victory" Fernando Alonso

It was a dramatic final chapter in a event dominated by the #7 car. It was somehow reminiscent of Toyota's 1994, '98 and 2016 Le Mans campaigns - when last-gasp failures ripped victory from its grasp on each occasion.

Conway, Kobayashi and Lopez had at least one hand on the Le Mans trophy with the 23-hour mark approaching, and had done so for much of the race. They were the faster of two Toyota driver combinations for all but a few short phases of the event.

Lopez admitted that he "cried all the way back to the pits" around that second slow lap in a row. Conway, the star of the race and the fastest of the six Toyota drivers, described the dramatic events "as a big kick in the nuts".

He reckoned that he and his team-mates "had it done after looking good for 23 hours", and his opposite numbers in #8 weren't about to disagree.

"Completely unexpected" is how Alonso described the victory that has made him only the third multiple Le Mans winner with a 100% record after Woolf Barnato and Jean-Pierre Wimille.

"We didn't have the pace over the 24 hours; we didn't have the pace of the #7 car," said the now three-time world champion, who wrapped up the WEC LMP1 drivers' title together with Buemi and Nakajima.

"I feel for my team-mates who are actually more than team-mates, they are friends. They would have deserved the victory."

Buemi came to the conclusion that it was going to be a tough day for the drivers of the #8 Toyota almost from the start of the race.

"We saw very early that we didn't have the pace," he said.

That became clear when he was unable to react as Conway raced away into a clear lead from the pole won by Kobayashi.

Conway was more than three seconds up by the end of the first lap of the 87th running of the Le Mans 24 Hours and had extended the advantage to nearly 10s by the time Toyota began its pitstop cycle.

When the TS050s stopped for a second time, Buemi's deficit was nearer 20s and the gap between the two cars continued to increase after Alonso and Kobayashi took over following quadruple stints from Toyota's starting drivers.

Neither crew had been entirely happy with their respective TS050s on the second day of qualifying on Thursday. Conway ended up going for the set-up that his crew had run in the race last year, which was in some way borrowed from their team-mates in the sister car that year. They went down the same route as the #8 ahead of the 2018 race after being unhappy with the direction they had ploughed through practice and qualifying.

"We wanted to tweak it a little bit, but instead took something that we knew was proven," explained Conway. "It was a known proposition even though the tyres have changed a little bit. We weren't going for outright lap time; it was more about having a well-balanced car."

The drivers in #8 chased the set-up through the early hours of the race, twice having the nose changed and once the rear deck as they sought to improve the balance of the car. They did improve it, and edged closer to their team-mates on pace, particularly in the night. But, Conway pointed out, the drivers of car #7 were "still fast enough to pull away when we had to".

They had extended their lead to over a minute by the sixth hour when the first of nine full safety-car periods to interrupt this race was called. That allowed Alonso to close up on Kobayashi.

"It seems that we are good at organising drama" Pascal Vasselon

Early in the next hour, Nakajima got ahead of Lopez. With spots of rain falling, Toyota took advantage of a slow zone to bring the Japanese driver in to put him on a hot set of slicks straight from the tyre ovens. With the conditions slightly worsening, it then planned to bring the leader in for intermediates.

The rain eased after Lopez had committed to entering the pits as the slow zone ended and the stop become one for fuel only. But because it had been made under green-flag conditions, Lopez found himself in second position.

It didn't take long for #7 to get back ahead, but right at the end of the hour the positions were reserved again. Lopez made a quick trip through the gravel at Mulsanne Corner on an out-lap and a handful of laps later had a moment at the Indianapolis left-hander.

Lopez fell as much as eight seconds behind Nakajima before the next round of pitstops, but a sequence of quick laps from the Argentinian, including the two after the sister car had stopped, allowed Conway to just get out of the pits in front of Buemi. The #8 car would only lead another 19 laps over the remainder of the race prior to the final hour.

It is easy to point the finger of blame at Toyota for Conway and co's loss of the race. It might seem obvious from the outside that with such a healthy lead it would have made sense to swap all four tyres when Lopez initially pitted.

But he had, just two laps before, been put on a new set of Michelins that had been kept back for the run to the flag. Changing them all would have meant sending him out on used tyres that had already done a quadruple stint.

"That is not ideal when you want to be safe at the end," said Toyota Motorsport GmbH technical director Pascal Vasselon. "That's why we put [on] only one used tyre and not four. It's all about risk management."

Vasselon and TMG team director Rob Leupen admitted that it did cross the team's collective mind to swap around the order after car #7's woes. But the decision was taken not to intervene. The car that had dominated the race would finish second.

"It was a race incident and we just had to let the race go to the end," explained Vasselon.

"The drivers of car #7 just have to accept what happened, even if it is very frustrating for them and the team as well, because we were all very happy with the ranking that was in place just one hour before the end.

"It seems that we are good at organising drama."