TOYOTA RACING’s victory at the 94th edition of the 24 Hours of Le Mans reaffirms the manufacturer as one of the strongest forces in the world’s premier endurance race. The team formed by Kamui Kobayashi, Mike Conway, and Nyck de Vries triumphed after climbing through the field and executing the strategy to take first place at the Circuit de la Sarthe on Sunday, the 14th.
The win places TOYOTA RACING among the manufacturers with the most Le Mans victories, ranking sixth and tied with the fifth-placed on the list, with six wins. All of them were achieved since the race became part of the World Endurance Championship calendar, which makes TOYOTA RACING the greatest winner in the “WEC era.”
The first conquest came in 2018 with Sébastien Buemi, who remains with TOYOTA RACING to this day, Kazuki Nakajima and Fernando Alonso, the Spaniard who swapped Formula 1 for the WEC to defend the manufacturer. In the following year, Buemi and Nakajima won again, this time with Brendon Hartley as teammate, who also returned to the WEC after a spell in F1. That same trio also won in 2020.
In 2021 came the first victory for the GR010 HYBRID, with Kobayashi, Conway and José María López, the “Pechito”, who to this day is the only South American to win with TOYOTA Racing. In 2022, Buemi and Hartley returned to triumph on the Circuit de La Sarthe, this time alongside Ryo Hirakawa. After four years, TOYOTA RACING won with the TR010 HYBRID, used for the first time at Le Mans this year, a feat celebrated by the drivers.
“I am extremely grateful, relieved and happy to have won at Le Mans. It is the first time I win here, so I am very pleased. It has been a long week and also during the race. We had several setbacks and challenges to overcome and, to be honest, at times I thought we were out of the running. But that shows you can never give up,” De Vries said.
“I knew we could climb up in the classification, but I had no idea how far we would go, nor how tight the battles would be. Positions were changing constantly, and only in the last two hours did we feel we had a chance. It was an incredible job by the whole team. Kamui and Nyck were incredibly fast, and the credit goes to the pit-stop crew because they were flawless,” Conway commented.
“It was a big challenge for us, but we never gave up. Car 7 has achieved many runner-up finishes at Le Mans, but we finally achieved our second victory. We waited so long for this win and the feeling is amazing. The whole week wasn’t easy, including the race, which didn’t run without missteps. We had a tire puncture early on and that made things quite difficult for us. But Mike, Nyck, our engineers and our pit crew did a superb job. It was an incredible day,” Kobayashi said.
After winning at Le Mans, TOYOTA RACING prepares for the next WEC round, the 6 Hours of São Paulo, scheduled at the Interlagos racetrack on July 12. The manufacturer is the most successful in the event, with two wins in five editions, and the only one to triumph in both the LMP1 era and the current Hypercar era.
