Marko Hanželic
Toyota # 8 with the Swiss Sebastien Buemi, A New Zealander Brendon Hartley and the Japanese Kazuki Nakayimo is the winner of this year’s performance of the traditional endurance race 24 hours Le Mans. For the Japanese team, this year’s victory is the third in a row in this race.
This year’s performance of the race, which was due pandemic COVID-19 postponed to September and held in front of empty stands, again passed in the sign of the dominance of the car Toyota TS050Hybrid. The winning trio drove off 387 rounds, but the Japanese still failed to celebrate a double victory.
The reason for this is that it is the second Toyota race car with a start number of 7 to be driven Kamui Kobayashi, Mike Conway in Jose Maria Lopez, at night just minutes after half the time, had trouble with turbine charger, which was due to a defect in the exhaust manifold. They managed to replace both parts, but spent almost 30 minutes doing so.
For the second year in a row the crew of a Toyota race car with start number 7 he has no luck. In 2019, the trio was sovereign in the lead when a punctured tire prevented them from winning an hour before the end. She was again this year Toyota # 7 at the defect already a circle in front of the pursuers.
Toyota # 8 she had to go to the pits on Saturday night with defective brake cooling and a 10-minute service was required. Since Toyota rectified this fault during the safety car phase, there was no major loss of time. After trouble for Toyota # 7 victory for # 8 was just another rhetorical question.
The only notable competition for Toyota they were both Rebellion R13, who took second and third place. As for top speed, they were cars earca without hybrid drive pretty close Toyota. After all, it is Rebellion # 1 (Senna / Menezes / Nato) drove the fastest lap (3: 19,264 minutes).
United Autosports is in Le Mans achieved double success: Oreca # 22 with drivers Philip Albuquerque, Phil Hanson in Paulo di Resto brought not only the first victory in Le Mans for the team and all three drivers, but also the title of champion in the class LMP2 World Cup WEC 2019/20, which includes 24 hours of Le Mans.
In class GTE Pro the trio narrowed very quickly to a duel between Aston Martin in Ferrari. Already in the first lap, it was clear that Porsche would not be able to keep up with the pace of the other two. Porsche 911 RSR-19 when accelerating from narrow corners, he could not follow race cars with forced-powered powertrains. In the end, they were in a race car Aston Martin Vantage AMR the fastest Johnny Adam, Charlie eastwood in Salih Yoluc (TF Sport).
