Inside the Le Mans finish too barmy for Hollywood

“You can think about doing a movie of it, but it would never be happening like this. If you go to Hollywood and you see this, you say, ‘It’s too much, that would never happen’. But actually it happened.”

As Yifei Ye’s #41 Team WRT LMP2 ORECA rolled to a halt at the Dunlop Curve on the final lap of this year’s Le Mans 24 Hours - a race he had been on course to win with team-mates Robert Kubica and Louis Deletraz - technical director Sebastien Viger had no time to despair.

The Belgian team’s sister #31 entry was set to inherit the lead, but on tyres well past their best, Robin Frijns’ slender advantage over the charging Jota ORECA of Tom Blomqvist was rapidly decreasing. From a likely 1-2 result on its Le Mans debut starting the final lap, now WRT faced coming away empty-handed.

But Frijns wasn’t to be denied. As the cars around him slowed to a near crawl for the ceremonial finish, the Dutchman didn’t let up his pace and came perilously close to wiping out the ACO official waving the chequered flag as he jinked around the GTE Pro class-winning Ferrari. The winning margin enjoyed by Frijns, Ferdinand Habsburg and Charles Milesi was just 0.727 seconds.

From one of Le Mans’ most heartbreaking defeats to victory with its second car in a matter of minutes, WRT’s Le Mans debut was a rollercoaster of emotion that Viger says it is still processing now - even after the unfortunate #41 crew wrapped up the European Le Mans Series title with a round to spare at Spa last month.

“I still think we still didn’t get to the bottom of the feelings at WRT,” reflects Viger, who was overseeing race engineers Jonas Vanpachtenbeke and Jerome Plassart across the #31 and #41 cars. “You lost the [lead] car on the last lap of a 24-hour race, but at the same time the other car that didn’t pit for fresh tyres for four hours without the air jack managed to win by seven tenths, nearly crashing into the flag man. We’re still not really believing what happened, we often discuss it between team members now.

“The general feeling is this is the craziest finish of a Le Mans since ages.”

The dramatic LMP2 conclusion has been compared to some of Le Mans' greatest races, like Hans Herrmann and Jacky Ickx's battle in 1969

Photo by: Sutton Images

The dramatic conclusion to the 2021 race certainly merits discussion in the same breath as some of Le Mans’ most famous finishes; the final lap battle between Jacky Ickx and Hans Herrmann in 1969, Al Holbert’s overheating Porsche 956 sputtering over the finish line with a seized engine in 1983 and, of course, the previous barometer for late Le Mans heartbreak provided by Toyota in 2016. Although the WRT experience wasn’t for outright honours, it was felt no less keenly by team founder Vincent Vosse and his staff.

Viger admits that the sight of Ye stranded by the side of the road at the Dunlop Curve, unable to re-fire his engine and destined not to be classified for failing to complete the final lap within the mandated time, was the single worst moment of his career so far.

“To win Le Mans should be the happiest moment of your career,” he says.

“We were not wanting to think about [victory] because, funny enough, we had the Toyota story fresh in our mind. We didn’t think it could happen to us. But it has” Sebastien Viger

“There are engineers and mechanics that try for all their career and never manage to win it or even be on the podium. It was such a feat to be there with two cars on the first participation after six or seven months, pushing like crazy to man the programme. It was actually only in January that we had the real green light, so it was a rush to get everything ready for the first races.

"For myself, Vincent, Thierry Tassin and Pierre Dieudonne, the sporting director, we were in the back office looking at the telemetry and we could not believe what was going on. We didn’t celebrate the win like we should have, because we were half happy and half-devastated for the other car.

"You don’t really know if you need to be happy or how to feel – you lose Le Mans and you win Le Mans in the same time, which is a weird feeling.”

#31 Team WRT Oreca 07 - Gibson LMP2, Robin Frijns, Ferdinand Habsburg, Charles Milesi

Photo by: Paul Foster

The team had advanced into a dominant 1-2 position - with the #31 car ahead - by morning despite opting for deliberately conservative strategy calls. It had benefitted from fancied opponents hitting trouble, including the pole-sitting #38 Jota ORECA and United Autosports 'all-star' #23 car, but crucially the team made no mistakes.

“The biggest challenge at the end was to make sure that we didn’t trip ourselves and offer the win to somebody else just because we operatively didn’t manage to secure both cars,” he says.

The two cars swapped places when problems with the air jacks delayed the #31, but Viger says there was no indication "that could lead us to expect something major".

Given the manner in which WRT had missed out on victory at the Spa 24 Hours just two weeks before, with the winning Iron Lynx Ferrari passing its Dries Vanthoor-driven Audi in the final 10 minutes, WRT couldn’t be accused of complacency either. Indeed, Viger explains that the team was acutely aware of what could happen, citing Toyota’s unforgettable misfortune to guard against getting carried away.

“We were not wanting to think about [victory] because, funny enough, we had the Toyota story fresh in our mind,” he says. “We didn’t think it could happen to us. But it has.”

The #41 car started without a problem on the Monday after the race

Photo by: Paul Foster

In an unusual post-script to WRT's remarkable 2021 Le Mans, the #41 car started up without a problem on Monday when it was released back to the team “from the cemetery, like they call it”. An ECU malfunction caused by an electrical short was later discovered to have been the cause.

“It’s this kind of typical electrical gremlin that you can never manage to replicate,” Viger explains.

“It’s always clear when we start a new project, that we want to win but not at the expense of the other programmes. We don’t want to be on top with one team and not on top with the other team” Sebastien Viger

After all its success in GT competition, twice winning the Spa 24 Hours, conquering the Nurburgring 24 Hours and countless titles in GT World Challenge Europe (Sprint, Endurance and combined) over the past decade, it has become a default expectation for WRT to be right at the sharp end. Given rival LMP2 teams have been running the current-spec cars since 2017, and the group put together by WRT was entirely new, it would have been understandable if it had taken time for the cogs to click into place upon its switch to prototypes. Yet Kubica, Deletraz and Ye won on their ELMS debut in Barcelona before repeating the feat in the next round at the Red Bull Ring.

Viger concedes that the timing of WRT’s move “played in our favour”, as Goodyear became the control tyre supplier and all LMP2 cars were slowed to maintain the laptime difference to the top class as Hypercars replaced LMP1. But nothing should be taken away from its achievement in beating well-established squads that had years of set-up data to work from.

There has been plenty of ELMS success for WRT this year

Photo by: ELMS

Results for Frijns, Habsburg and Milesi in WRT's World Endurance Championship entry were initially steadier, with Viger describing the clutch problem on its debut as “a cold shower” for the team after its ELMS glory.

“It was kind of, ‘OK, you won [ELMS] races but keep your feet down’,” he says.

But, despite that, a title double in its rookie year remains very much on the cards. The Le Mans victory has put the trio just one point behind Blomqvist, Stoffel Vandoorne and Sean Gelael in the WEC with only the two Bahrain rounds to go.

Vosse’s stated aim from the beginning of not compromising its efforts in GT racing has also been achieved, with the successful defence of its GTWCE Sprint Cup title for Vanthoor and Charles Weerts safeguarding its status as one of GT3’s benchmark outfits.

“This is quite a big feat, to be on top of every championship you manage to line up and all the credit has to come to Vincent,” says Viger.

“It’s always clear when we start a new project, he was clear on DTM, it was clear again on LMP2 that we want to win but not at the expense of the other programmes. We don’t want to be on top with one team and not on top with the other team. It’s kind of a healthy competition internally in the team trying to see who is bringing the most silverware. Let’s hope it carries on like this!”

The flag waver was almost a victim of WRT's dramatic Le Mans success

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images