Porsche after the resignation of Toyota to the 18th victory in Le Mans

Porsche celebrated its 18th victory in the legendary 24 Hours of Le Mans race after leading Toyota broke down less than four minutes before the end of the race.

Prior to that, Neel Jani took the wheel of a Porsche 919 at the finish of the race and went on the hunt for the leading Kazuki Nakayimo. The Swiss reduced the gap from a minute and 10 seconds to just 30 seconds in the last part, but he had to box two new tires ten minutes before the end, giving Nakajima a free path to the finish in Toyota. At Toyota, they eagerly awaited their first victory in the race at Le Mans, but three and a half minutes before the end, the Japanese had to slow down.

Jani thus took the lead, celebrating his first victory in the toughest endurance test with Marco Lieb and Romain Dumas.

Nakajima finally managed to get the car over the finish line, but too late to be included in the official results of the race.

Second place was looking forward to in another Toyota race car. The trio of Mike Conway, Stephane Sarrazin and Kamui Kobayashi otherwise led most of the first half of the race before they had to leave the lead to No. 5. All chances of winning race car No. 6 floated on the water when Kobayashi turned into the sand four hours before the end and then got involved with an even slower race car, injuring his own.

The team underwent a preventive inspection of the cooling system, causing them to lose 10 minutes.

However, they experienced a real defeat at Audi, where they won third and fourth place after Toyota's pitch. The Audi R18s with numbers 8 and 7 finished the race with 14 and 17 laps behind, respectively, after often stopping in pits throughout the race.

The longest stop between the two was made by No. 8, driven by Oliver Jarvis, Lucas di Grassi and Loic Duval. The mechanics had to replace the front right suspension at 21pm, which took them 40 minutes.

No. 7 by Andrea Lottere, Benoit Treulyer and Marcel Fessler, the brake discs were replaced preventively shortly afterwards, and they dropped out of the fight for victory on Saturday night, when mechanics had to replace a broken e-throne turbocharger.

Porsche’s No. 1, driven by current world endurance champions, finished the race in fifth place with 38 laps behind. They dropped out of the competition for higher positions after lengthy repairs to the coolant system that was leaking coolant.