Toyota Gazoo Racing made a determined start to the 93rd Le Mans 24 Hours as an exciting battle took shape in the 21-strong Hypercar field during the opening quarter of the race.
After six hours, the #8 GR010 HYBRID of Sébastien Buemi, Brendon Hartley and Ryo Hirakawa were running sixth, although the #7 GR010 HYBRID of Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi and Nyck de Vries were down in 18th after a penalty halted their push for the top 10.
In front of a sell-out crowd of over 320,000, the race began at 4 pm on a warm, cloudy afternoon. Sébastien lined up 10th in the #8, with Mike in the 16th in his #7. Both cars started their fightback in the opening hour, although the #7 suffered bodywork damage on the very first lap when it was hit by a Peugeot.
Mike battled hard to close in on the top 10 and overtook both Alpines on either side of the one-hour mark. Sébastien made solid progress, getting past the #15 BMW on track before leapfrogging the #51 Ferrari in the pits to run seventh at the end of the second hour, maintaining a strong pace even on older tyres.
Early in the third hour, Brendon took new tyres at the first driver changes but dropped to seventh when the #51 Ferrari and #15 BMW got ahead during his first stint. Meanwhile, Kamui set a fast pace on new tyres until a lock-up at Mulsanne corner cost him 15 seconds. As the fourth hour approached, Kamui pitted to replace his damaged front right tyre.
The fifth hour started with Brendon challenging the #311 Cadillac for sixth, while Kamui was 11th. At the next driver change after four-and-a-half hours, Ryo took over the #8 and kept up the hunt for the top six, while Nyck was pushing to recover into the top 10.
A battling overtake put the #7 into 13th, just a few seconds away from 10th, but that charge was halted by a 50-second stop-go penalty – imposed for exceeding the speed limit when leaving the pit lane at the start of Nyck’s stint. He took that penalty during a full course yellow late in the sixth hour.
“I had a clean stint, made no mistakes, and we are still in the running. We seem to be missing a little performance at this stage, particularly in terms of top speed, and that makes it harder to move up the order. But we are fighting, everyone is pushing very hard, and the mechanics have been doing solid pit stops. We are playing the long game, and so far, so good.” said Hartley.
Header Image: Toyota Gazoo Racing (Supplied)
