Top two teams thought Le Mans lead battle would go to final lap

Porsche salvaged victory in a race of attrition for the LMP1 cars, with its #2 car taking the overall lead from the LMP2 #38 Jackie Chan DC Racing ORECA in the 23rd hour.

But when the 919 Hybrid rejoined the race after lengthy repairs on Saturday, calculations made by both Porsche and the #38 team predicted that they would be battling each other on the final lap.

"It was really tight," said Brendon Hartley from the winning Porsche crew.

"From the calculations we made it was going to come down to the last lap.

"The pace that they predicted, we were looking at not passing all of the LMP2s, so the plan was just to push as hard as we could for the remaining 18 or 19 hours.

"Before I hopped back into the car they were not even expecting us to be fighting for the podium.

"Maybe the P2s ran into some problems - my three stints are potentially some of the best I've done, I really attacked as hard as I could."

Ex-Audi driver Oliver Jarvis, who dropped down to the LMP2 class with the #38 team for this year, said losing the lead earlier than initially predicted made it easier to accept.

"It was special to lead the race, I don't think that had ever been done in an LMP2 car," he said.

"I don't think we let ourselves really believe we could win it outright, so we didn't have that disappointment.

"Initial predictions were that it was going to be a last lap job.

"If we'd lost it on the last lap, that would have seriously hurt.

"The fact that in the end it was more than four or five minutes [in it], it's easier to take.

"As soon as I got out of the car with three hours to go, I knew it wasn't a possibility unless they had an issue - they're 13 seconds a lap quicker."

Jarvis also said it would have been wrong for the team to risk its class victory and overall podium finish to try to push flat out to hang onto the lead.

"That would have been an error," he added.

"If we'd gone off pushing for the outright victory, we'd have been foolish.

"We were pushing, but we were trying to stay off the kerbs, look after the gearbox.

"It was out of our hands - the pace they had, we can't match that."