Toyota: Winning without Porsche, Audi a 'shame' at Le Mans 2018

The #8 TS050 HYBRID of Fernando Alonso, Sebastien Buemi and Kazuki Nakajima beat the sister #7 car by two laps to finally end Toyota's wait for a victory in the endurance race last Sunday.

Toyota was six minutes from winning in 2016 when Kazuki Nakajima lost power, handing the Porsche victory and giving Audi a podium in its final year at Le Mans before leaving the WEC.

The Japanese manufacturer also dominated the early part of last year's race before two of its entries suffered technical issues and the third car was eliminated in a crash, which allow its only LMP1 manufacturer rival Porsche to recover from its own difficulties to win the race.

"Finally! I think we deserved this," Toyota team director Rob Leupen told Autosport. "I'm very happy.

"We could have skipped what happened to Kamui [Kobayashi, who picked up two late 10-second stop/go penalties in the #7 Toyota after failing to pit on the correct lap], that should not have happened.

"Of course it's a bit of a shame that Audi and Porsche weren't here with us, but this is good enough. We are happy with it."

"No - that's not possible," he said, when asked if the victory made up for Toyota's misfortune in recent years.

"But that's the beauty of this experience, it's all part of it and every year is different."

Toyota Motorsport GmbH technical director Pascal Vasselon described the victory as a "relief".

"It took too long basically for us to get this win," he said.

"Three times in the past we have been very close to making it but every time something exceptional was happening. This time went well."