2016 24 Hours of Le Mans: Lucky strike for Porsche

  • Jun 20, 2016
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Disaster for the Toyota hands over Porsche its 18th 24 Hours of Le Mans victory

Porsche wins 2016 24 Hours of Le Mans

The 24 Hours of Le Mans can be barbarous. From being happy and confident the Toyota outfit went to being dejected just three minutes shy of 24 hours. With the crowd all set to witness a Japanese brand emerge victorious for the second time in the history of Le Mans, their retirement from the race towards the wee end was quite a shocker. And that especially since the car proved to absolutely reliable and was on the verge of an epic victory. After leading a majority of the race Kazuki Nakajima’s Toyota TS050 Hybrid coughed for power and eventually came to a stop at the start/finish straight. Toyota’s emotion was aptly manifested in their tweet, “Heartbroken.”   

Their retirement from the race however gave the Porsche camp a lot to cheer about, as Neel Jani inherited the lead and crossed the finish line in first. While Toyota were the clear favourites, the no.2 Porsche was right up there with the two Toyotas fighting for the top spot. Having posted the fastest lap in qualifying to secure pole, they had the pace to challenge their Japanese rivals.

A happy Porsche camp after winning 2016 LeMans

Although Nakajima managed to get the car going they were not classified due to the length of time taken to complete the final lap. This promoted the no.6 Toyota of Stephane Sarrazin, Mike Conway and Kamui Kobayashi to the second best spot on the podium. Audi was out of the podium contention throughout the race, but also reaped the advantage of a podium finish.

Nicolas Lapierre, Gustavo Menezes and Stephane Richelmi drove the Signatech Alpine to victory in the LMP2 category. Ford took top honours in the GTE Pro class with Joey Hand, Dirk Muller and Sebastien Bourdais at the wheel. In the GT Am category, Bill Sweedler, Townsend Bell and Jeff Segal driving the no.62 Scuderia Corsa took top honours.

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