Ferrari have won the 2023 24 Hours of Le Mans, the Italian manufacturer’s 10th win and their first in 50 years, in the 499P’s debut year, plus the centenary of the Le Mans race itself.
Alessandro Pier Guidi brought the car across the line to send the Ferrari team, and his teammates in the #51 Ferrari 499P, Antonio Giovinazzi and James Calado, into raptures.
While Ferrari did take pole for the race, it was the sister car, the #50 of Antonio Fuoco, Nicklas Nielsen, and Miguel Molina. What ensued after the start was a crazy, crazy race — one that will surely go down in history as one of the great Le Mans races.
Calado started the #51 second, but soon dropped down to fourth as Toyota showed their pace, with Sebastien Buemi in the #8 Toyota GR010 Hybrid taking the lead with Nielsen second, Buemi’s teammate, Mike Conway, in the #7 Toyota third, and Calado fourth.
However, the race was soon neutralised as Jack Aitken crashed the #311 Action Express Cadillac V-Series.R on the opening lap at the first chicane.
When the race restarted after the new safety car procedure had been used for the first time, Conway soon took Nielsen. However, the Dane attacked back and took the position off him at Mulsanne Corner the following lap.
At the end of the first hour, Buemi led from Calado. Buemi soon pitted, however, promoting Calado to the lead of the race for the first time.
Nielsen’s undercut worked a treat, meanwhile, and once the pitstop cycle had shaken out, with Calado pitting last, the order was Nielsen, with Sebastien Bourdais a surprise second in the #3 Cadillac V-Series.R. Buemi was third with Calado fourth, but had Earl Bamber in the sister #2 Cadillac right on his gearbox and threatening to take fourth off the Brit.
A spate of crashes then occured, which required slow zones situated around the track to assist in clean up and car recovery. Rodrigo Sales crashed his #14 Nielsen Oreca 07-Gibson heavily at the Dunlop curve, making the car the race’s first retirement. Ricky Taylor then came acropper in the #13 Tower Oreca 07-Gibson on the Mulsanne Straight, requiring another slow zone.
Amid this, Calado led by 3.7 seconds from Bamber — but not for long, as another slow zone was required again at Dunlop curve, as three cars were involved in a crash entering the slow zone.
Bourdais, Ulysse de Pauw in the #21 AF Corse Ferrari 488 GTE Evo, and the #55 GMB Aston Martin Vantage AMR with Gustav Birch onboard were all involved in the crash, with Bourdais’ Cadillac requiring new rear bodywork. However, the other two GTE-Am cars were instant retirements.
At this point, the #51, now with Antonio Giovinazzi behind the wheel, slipped out of the top 5 in the Hypercar class. It would return to the top 3 at the end of the third hour, in second, behind teammate in the #50 car Antonio Fuoco.
While both Ferraris had pace, especially the #50, the two would flit in out of the lead, as almost every car in Hypercar cycled round to lead the race at some point in the opening hours of the French endurance classic.
At the end of the seventh hour, Pier Guidi would lead the race having taken over from Giovinazzi sometime earlier. However, the Italian spun the car intop the gravel at the first chicane, requiring the marshals to lift him and the car out.
While normally this would have cost them at least a few laps, luck was on their side. One of their major challengers, the #7 Toyota, with Kamui Kobyashi at the wheel, came together with the #66 JMW Ferrari, the #35 Alpine, and the #39 Graff at Tertre Rouge, in a curious incident that was, by this point, cloaked almost completely by darkness.
The result of this incident, which may have been caused by the slow zone to recover Pier Guidi’s stricken, beached Ferrari, was that a driveshaft in the #7 Toyota broke, making it impossible for Kobyashi to get it back to the pits.
The safety car then came out to recover the four cars involved in the Tertre Rouge incident, ensuring Pier Guidi’s mistake didn’t cost him anything other than a few positions, lying fifth in the safety car queue.
However, drama for the teamcar soon ensued, with an ERS cooling problem caused by a stone puncturing the radiator. It was pushed back into the garage and lost 20 minutes while the leak and radiator was fixed, taking them out of contention.
At this point, the contenders for the race were emerging: the #51 Ferrari, the #94 Peugeot of Loic Duval, Gustavo Menezes, and Nico Muller, and the remaining #8 Toyota.
However, at the half way mark, Menezes also took the Peugeot out of contention, nosing into the barriers at the first chicane and trundling slowly back to the pits for new bodywork and suspension repair.
With others falling by the wayside, including the Porsches, this put the race between the #8 Toyota, and the #51 Ferrari.
Over the next half of the race, the two contenders duked it out, trading places and gaps when the other got the upper hand. At one point the Toyota, with Ryo Hirakawa at the wheel, had a large — for this race – 40 second lead.
However, in the full darkness with only headlights to light much of the track, Hirakawa hit something — maybe debris, possibly a squirrel — and damaged the nose on his Toyota. This caused Pier Guidi to close in, and by the time both stopped, on the same lap, Pier Guidi was able to jump the Japanese driver, with Tioyota changing their car’s nose at the stop.
From this moment on, 14 hours into the race, Ferrari were able to control the pace of the race., leading at the top of every remaining the hour. Toyota got close, with Brendon Hartley catching Giovinazzi at one point and closiung the gap to 9 seconds in the last couple of hours.
However, Hartley, who’d been in the car for a triple stint, was replaced at the wheel of the Toyota by Hirakawa. Before he climbed out of the car for the final time at Le Mans in 2023, the Kiwi told his teammate that the rear brakes had a tendency to lock up the rear wheels. He handed over the car to the Japanese driver with a gap of around 15 seconds after Hirakawa exited the pit lane.
However, Hirakawa wasn’t able to treat the brakes as well as his teammate, and just a few laps into his stint, he locked the rear wheels braking for Arnage, nosing the barrier then also hitting it with the rear of the car for good measure. He managed to get it back to the pits, where the team replaced the front and rear bodywork, but it dropped them over two minutes back from the Ferrari, ending Toyota’s 2023 challenge.
For the rest of the race, with an hour and a half remaining, Ferrari controlled the pace, and despite a scare at the final pitstop where the car would not refire in the pitlane, Alessandro Pier Guidi crossed the line to win his, James Calado’s and Antonio Giovinazzi’s first overall Le Mans win, in the race’s centenary year.
Second was the #8 Toyota GR010 of Sebastien Buemi, Ryo Hirakawa, and Brendon Hartley. They challenged for the lead throughout the race after starting fifth, with Buemi moving up from there at the start to lead at the end of the first lap when the safety car came out for the barrier repair at the first chicane, as a result of Aitken’s accident.
While Toyota had pace over the majority of their Hypercar rivals, they couldn’t quite challenge Ferrari, with the 499P being especially fast in a straight line. As early challengers Porsche and Peugeot fell away, with the latter finishing ninth, 22nd, and 54th, while Peugeot finished eighth and 27th, the Toyota challenge came to the fore in the second half of the race, taking the fight to Ferrari.
Hirakawa had a 40 second lead at one point, earned through pit stop strategy and luck in slow zones, but Giovinazzi was able to reel the Japanese driver back in, chipping away at the lead until it was just 1.5 seconds when they stopped. Hartley replaced Hirakawa at the stop, and he tried to chase Giovinazzi’s replacement Pier Guidi, as the Ferrari had jumped Toyota to the lead while the Toyota crew fitted a new nose to the car.
And that was how it finished, Ferrari confidently controlling the pace at the front and never letting the gap get below 9 seconds. Hirakawa’s spin did briefly put Toyota on tenterhooks as it looked like the car might need to be pushed into the garage, but in the end they were able to fix the car on the pit apron and send Hirakawa back out, to finish third, a minute and 21 seconds behind Ferrari.
In third was the #2 Cadillac V-Series.R of Earl Bamber, Alex Lynn and Richard Westbrook, a lap down on Ferrari and Toyota. The Cadillac team was strong all race – the sister car, #3 Cadillac, finished fourth, in the hands of Scott Dixon, Renger Van der Zande, and Sebastien Bourdais — but the Chip Ganassi-run cars did not have the pace to challenge the LMH-rules cars of Toyota and Ferrari.
The two cars started sixth and eighth, and diced with the Porsches, two of which started ahead of them, early on. As the Porsches fell away with reliability issues, the Cadillacs – with the same spec hybrid units and gearboxes — managed to have a mostly trouble-free race, taking third and fourth in a good display for the American team.
Fifth was the delayed #50 Ferrari of Fuoco, Nielsen and Molina, five laps down on their winning teammates. The #50 had provided ample competition to the teamcar early on, but the radiator damage put paid to any serious challenge, with fifth the best that could be managed after leaving the pits with the damage repaired.
