The 24 Hours of Le Mans is over, with the No. 8 Toyota car driven by the trio of Sebastien Buemi, Kazuki Nakajima and Fernando Alonso starting on pole and finishing in first place to take the victory in the LMP1 field.
24 Hours of Le Mans 2018 results: Recap, winners & analysis for endurance racing
Fernando Alonso helped his Toyota teammates to victory in his first ever appearance at the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
Photo by Ker Robertson/Getty Images
It was a long-standing “curse” for Toyota, who have suffered a number of issues preventing them from picking up the win in the endurance race from the Circuit de la Sarthe. They finished ahead of the No. 7 Toyota driven by Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi and Jose Maria Lopez, but not by a lot.
The No. 8 car initially had some issues when Sebastien Buemi lost a couple minutes in the pits, but a brilliant drive from Alonso, a Formula 1 driver with McLaren, during his night session made up most of the deficit to the No. 7 car. Alonso was racing in his first ever Le Mans appearance. The No. 8 car took the lead at Arnage during the 16th hour and did not relinquish it.
G-Drive Racing Oreca has their first ever Le Mans victory with the strong drive of their No. 26 car from Jean-Eric Vergne, Andrea Pizzitola and Romain Rusinov. They were among the favorites to win the LMP2 field and they delivered after some issues during the first hour or so of the race. The No. 36 car couldn’t keep up, but took second ahead of the No. 39 Graff-SO24 Racing Oreca of Tristan Gommendy, Vincent Capillaire and Jonathan Hirschi.
In the GTE Pro field, Porsche took a relatively easy 1-2 victory with their No. 92 car driven by Kevin Estre, Michael Christensen and Laurens Vanthoor never being seriously threatened by the other cars in the field. The GTE Am field was topped by the No. 77 Dempsey-Proton Porsche crew of Julien Andlauer, Christian Ried and Matt Campbell.
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