The standout memories of Le Mans 2021

What will I remember most about Le Mans 24 Hours in 2021? The start of what we believe is going to be a bright new era for sportscar racing? Toyota's fourth victory in a row? A finish so close in LMP2 that it was almost beyond belief? The return of a crowd to the greatest motor race of them all? None of the above, actually.

What has stuck in my mind so far was the block of a single colour at the top of the timing screens at the finish. Each of the World Endurance Championship's four classes has its own signature colour that provides the backdrop to each race number on the car and up on the timing screen. Hypercar's colour is red. There were five cars in class and five blocks of red at the top of the order. That's memorable to my mind because it was so unexpected.

A smattering of blue — the colour allotted to LMP2 — in among the red come the end of the race was expected by everyone. I was convinced that we'd be seeing either a Toyota or a Glickenhaus Le Mans Hypercar being dragged back into its garage ready to receive attention for some kind of malady over the course of the race. Perhaps on multiple occasions.

Toyota's GR010 HYBRID and the Pipo-engined 007 LMH from Glickenhaus are cars new for 2021 that have had a far from perfect reliability records so far over this campaign. If the cars couldn't run through six or eight hours at a regular WEC round, then what chance did they have of a clean run over 24?

If I'd had a farm to bet, I would have put it on a P2 car finishing among the Hypercars last weekend. I wasn't quite convinced that one would sneak onto the overall podium, though I thought there was a fair chance. My assumption was that the law of averages would mean one of the cars from each of the two LMH manufacturers, Toyota and Glickenhaus, would make it through the 24 Hours without significant delay.

PLUS: Why Toyota's Le Mans 24 Hours victory was not as simple as it looked

The Alpine, meanwhile, had to be a good bet for a clean run because it was the fourth Le Mans for the Gibson-engined ORECA design that started out as the Rebellion R-13. That's not to forget the impressive finishing record of the Signatech team that runs the Renault marque's programme: it has won the LMP2 class three times, and since the team entered the sportscar arena in 2009 and came to Le Mans for the first time, a Signatech entry only twice failed to see the chequered flag.

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

Photo by: Marc Fleury

Signatech's experience stands in stark contrast to that of Glickenhaus Racing. Of course, the American marque has brought in Joest Racing to bolster its set-up and there is no team with more experience — or success, of course — at Le Mans. But the rest of the organisation centred on Podium Advanced Technologies in Italy was new to the event and to prototype racing.

Few were predicting that Glickenhaus would make it to the chequered flag without encountering some kind of problem. In fact, many were proclaiming that the two red cars wouldn't make it to the end full stop. Yet come four o'clock on Sunday afternoon, the two Pipo-engined 007s were still going strong. Or rather one of them was. The water temperatures on the fifth-placed car were off the clock but it still made it home.

It needs to be put on record that the two 007s made fewer pitstops and spent less time in the pits in comparison with both Toyota and Alpine. The winning GR010 HYBRID from Japanese manufacturer came into the pits 33 times, the fourth-placed Glickenhaus 28. Their total time time in the pitlane was 44 minutes and 18s compared with 40m23s. Back to my betting theme, you wouldn't have got very good odds on that happening ahead of the race.

Glickenhaus needs to be applauded for its efforts, even if from the outside it looked like it was never in the hunt. But a car that got quicker as the race wore on as the rubber went down did have a shot at a top three. The #708 car shared by Olivier Pla, Pipo Derani and Franck Mailleux lost its chance of edging Nicolas Lapierre, Matthieu Vaxiviere and Andre Negrao in the Alpine out of the top because of an ill-timed full course yellow. It was just sheer bad luck about which the team could do nothing.

There is a fantasy 'what if' scenario involving both Toyotas requiring lengthy stops to fix their fuel pick-up problems that gives Glickenhaus an unlikely debut Le Mans victory. It really isn't quite as fanciful as it sounds, because things were touch and go in both sides of the Toyota Gazoo Racing garage in the latter stages of the race.

Now if Glickenhaus had won Le Mans at its first attempt, that would have been memorable. I think I'd swap that for my nice neat block of red at the top of the screens as a way to remember Le Mans circa 2021.

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

Photo by: JEP / Motorsport Images