Monday, June 20, 2016

2016 24 Hours of Le Mans

Amid security concerns following series of terror attacks since the November 13 Paris attacks that placed most of France onto state of emergency, this year's 24 Hours of Le Mans held at Circuit de la Sarthe, located over 200km southwest of Paris, goes on as smoothly as planned but this year has known to be one of the most desperate Le Mans races in history.

Toyota was so close of winning Le Mans with their TS050 hybrid machines but their nearly 24 hours of fame ended in disaster when the #5 car lost power and stall on the pit straight with five minutes left. As a result, it ended on the 45th place overall, while the #6 car faced exterior damage. In a last minute race to the finish line, the duel between the #5 TS050 and the #2 919 Hybrid became one of the most thrilling duel in this year's Le Mans race. In the end, the Porsche scored another Le Mans win, while the #5 TS050 placed 2nd, and the #8 Audi R18 placed 3rd. This year's Le Mans is definitely way out of everyone's predictions.

Photo: Official Porsche Twitter
With Porsche snagged its second win while Toyota going home with bittersweet tears after their longstanding lead ended in late failures, Let's look at the other classes as the #36 Signatech Alpine won the LMP2 class while the #68 Ford GT won the LMGTE Pro class, repeating the history that its legendary ancestor did five decades ago.


In conclusion: So, Toyota may have been the star of the show for the last 24 hours and if these machines didn't broke down at the final minute, it would have been the next Japanese carmaker to win since the legendary Mazda 787B, but because of what happened, (sigh), I don't condone their last lap failure that led Porsche to score another victory. Despite of what happened, at least this year's Le Mans performed exactly as the fans hoped for despite France's state of emergency following the November 13 Paris attacks.

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