The Ferrari racing team were involved in a bizarre halt which allowed arch-rivals Toyota to take the lead at the 24 hours of Le Mans. After leading at the 12-hour mark, Ferrari had a major mishap as they came into the pit but their #51 car failed to get out which allowed Sébastien Buemi’s Toyota to take the lead.
But this lead didn’t last too long as the #8 Toyota now driven by Ryo Hirakawa started to lose time with a damaged front splitter and a slow right-rear puncture. This brought the #51 Ferrari 499P of Alessandro Pier Guidi into play, with the Italian closing an 11s gap with a series of rapid laps.
Watch the video here:
Barring this error, the 2023 24h Le Mans race has been extremely fruitful for the Prancing Horse as the Italian manufacturer managed to earn its first pole in 50 years. Coming back to the main race, the Sarthe circuit has continued to terrorize drivers, especially during the night session of the race.
Describing the experience of driving at night, Hendrick Motorsports’ driver Jimmie Johnson spoke about how he was terrified as he took the track after sundown. "It was frightening, especially how it took place – there was a pop-up shower at the start of the lap and it was just pouring," said Johnson.
"I came around a corner on slicks and it was just a downpour. But we brought the car around and put wets on it to really try to understand how the wets would perform. We probably ran 2-3 too many laps on the wets and it really fell apart once the track started to dry. We put the slicks back on and we were the fastest GT-style car on the track and were running the guys down,” he further added.
