All the reasons Le Mans 2018 was a blinder

ONE of the greatest races in motorsport has run its course for another year, and these are all the reasons 2018’s 24 Hours of Le Mans will go down in history.

Toyota finally wins

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The apparent curse that has, until now, thwarted Toyota’s Le Mans dream has finally ended after three decades of trying, with a win at the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

Fernando Alonso, Sebastian Buemi and Kazuki Nakajima took the podium’s top spot soothing the wounds of previous years, including 2016 when victory was wrenched from the team just minutes from the conclusion.

Toyota is now only the second Japanese manufacturer to win the 24 Hours of Le Mans after Mazda’s victory in 1991 with the iconic 787B.

For this year’s win, Nakajima drove the number eight TS050 Hybrid across the line to become the first Japanese driver to win the race for a Japanese manufacturer.

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Naysayers derided Toyota’s victory on social media as hollow, as the team was the only factory LMP1 effort in this year’s race following Porsche’s decision to pull the pin on its prototype program in 2017.

However, Le Mans is as much about conquering the race itself as it is beating your opponents, and in that regard, Toyota was near-flawless.

Alonso gets a step closer to the Triple Crown

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Fernando Alonso is now one of just two active drivers who could complete motorsports’ Triple Crown.

The coveted achievement is an unofficial title for winning the three biggest events in racing – the Monaco Grand Prix, Indianapolis 500, and 24 Hours of Le Mans and Graham Hill is the only driver to have completed the Triple Crown.

Alonso already has Monaco under his belt, and attempted the Indy 500 last year, but his part in Toyota’s victory at Le Mans now moves him tantalisingly close to cementing his place as an all-time great.

The Spanish Formula 1 world champion wasn’t reliant on his teammates to do the heavy lifting on the way to victory, with Alonso putting in a heroic quadruple stint in the middle of the night to put the number eight Toyota on the rear bumper of its sister TS050.

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The only other active driver who has more than one leg of the Triple Crown in their resume is Juan Pablo Montoya (who won Monaco in 2003, and has a pair of Indy 500 victories in 2000 and 2015). The Colombian competed at the 24 Hours of Le Mans for the first time this year, racing in the LMP2 category for United Autosports – which is ironically owned by Alonso’s boss Zak Brown.

Two out of three isn’t bad, but Alonso won’t be satisfied until he joins Hill in completing the Triple Crown. Expect another Indy 500 wildcard in 2019, or if rumours are to be believed, a full-time move to the American-based open-wheel series.

An Aussie win on debut

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Patriotic Aussie’s have plenty of reason to celebrate the 2018 race as well, with our very own Matt Campbell winning his class – on debut no less.

Campbell, who hails from the Queensland town of Warwick, competed for the Dempsey-Proton Racing team in the GTE-Am category alongside Christian Read and Julien Andlauer.

The trio won the class in their Porsche 911 RSR in dominant fashion, completing 334 laps, and finishing 28th outright.

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Winning on his Le Man debut proves once again Campbell is one of Australia’s most talented drivers currently competing overseas.

The incredible podium stats

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Alonso and Campbell weren’t the only first-time winners at Le Mans. In fact, everyone who stepped atop the podium did so for the first time at the endurance classic.

It’s the first time every class winner has been a first-time victor at the event since the inaugural running in 1923.

Domination in all classes

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A telling statistic of this year’s Le Mans was the percentage of laps led by the class victors. Toyota wasn’t the only dominant force in the 2018 race, with the other category winners each leading for a significant majority of the laps.

In LMP2 the winning G-Drive team led for 97.5 percent of the race, with 360 of 369 laps completed in first position. The GTE-Pro winning Porsche 911 RSR led 316 of 344 laps which equates to 91.9 percent of the race, while in GTE-AM the Dempsey-Proton Racing team clocked 300 laps of 335 in the lead (89.6 percent).

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Those numbers are significant, illustrating the impact of new ACO and FIA’s rules which led to the dominant victories. Stint lengths were regulated by the rule book this year, which slashed the ability for teams to create differing pit strategies, while slow zones and split safety cars, which punctuated the early stages of the race allowed leaders to build a gap, and then maintain their margins with little fuss.

GT class brilliance

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With 20 hours of the race completed, Porsche and Ford decided to put on a show for the fans, with a near hour-long stoush for second in the GTE-Pro category.

Hometown hero Sebastian Bourdais at the wheel of a Ford GT hunted down and attacked Porsche driver Fred Makowiecki, with the pair engaging in a tense battle. The Mulsanne straight became their battleground, with mere centimetres separating the cars at 300km/h+.

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While the prototype categories were unfortunately bereft of serious side-by-side racing this year, the GTE class shone as a beacon of why Le Mans remains revered by motorsport fans. While Balance of Performance remains an imperfect solution, it allowed for tight racing through the 24 hour enduro.