One of Ferrari’s newest 24 Hours of Le Mans winners, Antonio Fuoco, said that a change in track conditions would have been tricky for Ferrari.
“I think if the track condition changed, and we went faster, [that] was tricky for us. But I think, honestly, [Nicklas] did an amazing job and managed it very well,” Fuoco told Motorsport Week after the race.
Nielsen, meanwhile, said he did a significant amount of fuel save in order to make the flag ahead of the #7 Toyota of Jose Maria Lopez.
“So it was a very tricky last stint, especially with the fuel saving and everything that was going on,” the Dane told reporters after the race.
Nielsen pitted on lap 280 to fix a problem with a door latch on the one of the doors to the #50 499P. This was also his last fuel stop; he did a 13-lap stint to finish the race, fuel saving to make the end.
He had Lopez chasing him down all stint, with the Argentinian pushing hard to catch him by the end of the race. However, in the end, the 40-year-old was 14 seconds short of Nielsen at the flag.
“I did quite a big amount of fuel save,” said the Dane. “Honestly, I didn’t really think about it because if we wanted to go for the win, we only had one option right to save fuel. So I didn’t really want to complain. I didn’t want to do anything. I just asked the team to give me an energy target per lap, and that was it.
“I had to follow that because otherwise, we would run out of energy. And I was really pushing right in the last hours of the race to to keep temperature in the tyres and obviously to maintain the gap to the to the Toyota behind,” he concluded.
