1. Ferrari vs Toyota at Le Mans
The build-up was dominated by Toyota’s understandably cool response to a Balance of Performance change, announced by surprise just nine days before the race. While Ferrari’s 499P gained 24kg, the GR010 Hybrid’s extra 37kg vexed Toyota’s bosses – including the main man, Akio Toyoda, who made a cheeky reference to the move in the official ACO press conference the day before the race.
But if the tweak was designed to spice up the race, you’d have to say it worked. From the moment basketball star LeBron James dropped the Tricolore at 4pm on Saturday the action was incessant and frenetic.
Amazingly, all five of the big car makers – Ferrari, Toyota, Cadillac, Porsche and Peugeot – took turns at the front of the field, as a series of thrilling dogfights kept the 300,000-strong crown enthralled. But this race will be best remembered for the epic battle between the #51 Ferrari and the #8 Toyota that raged pretty much all race, but most specifically from the 11th hour once this crazy race finally started to take some shape we could make sense of.
Come Sunday morning it appeared the Ferrari, driven by Alessandro Pier Guidi, Antonio Giovinazzi and Briton James Calado, had the crucial edge as front floor damage to the Toyota robbed it of crucial downforce. A change of nose didn’t solve the problem and the extra time the pitstop took cost the #8 the lead.
The Ferrari opened a gap of nearly a minute, but in the 19th-hour trouble restarting the 499P from a pitstop handed the lead back to Sébastien Buemi, who was sharing with Kiwi Brendon Hartley and Ryo Hirakawa. An inspired Pier Guidi charged onto Buemi’s tail to pass on the Mulsanne after the Swiss had found himself balked by traffic.
The gap between the pair ebbed and flowed amid further slow zone interruptions until the race entered its closing stages.