Ferrari claimed its third straight overall Le Mans 24 Hours win with the 499P Hypercar today at the Circuit de la Sarthe. After the #50 and #51 factory cars strung together three wins between them through the opening rounds of the 2025 FIA WEC season, this weekend it was the #83 privately-entered 499P’s time to shine.
For Robert Kubica, Yifei Ye and Phil Hanson, it was a stunning performance. They had the speed and enjoyed the cleanest race of the three Ferraris in the huge Hypercar field, positioning themselves up front at the end to win the race by just 14 seconds.
It’s the first Le Mans overall win for all three drivers, as Ye and Kubica became the first men from China and Poland, respectively, to claim outright victories in the French classic. All three FIA WEC-entered 499Ps now have a Le Mans win, too, after the #51 won Centenary Le Mans in 2023 and the #50 emerged triumphant in last year’s edition.
“It’s a dream come true, I have to pinch myself. I have to thank the team, winning Le Mans back to back to back,” Ye said post-race.
“It’s a special day. Winning Le Mans since I started here in 2021, I have really enjoyed it and felt like a small kid in karting. This will be emotional for a long time. It’s a special day, and I didn’t expect it,” Kubica, who completed an Iron Man stint at the end of the race, commented.
“The emotions haven’t really hit yet,” Hanson summarised.
It was close up top in Hypercar, with five cars finishing classified on the lead lap. However, the results sheet doesn’t reflect the true story as Ferrari dominated most of the race, which was remarkably clean, featuring just one safety car intervention to bunch up the field.
And it was that Safety Car, called with just under 13 hours remaining on the clock following a hefty shunt for Nielsen Racing’s LMP2 ORECA at Tertre Rouge, that acted as a reprieve for Ferrari.
At that point, the 499Ps were not in control as all three were hit by penalties of varying severity in the opening hours of the race, for pit lane speeding, yellow flag infractions, gaining an advantage off-track, and even contact with a Corvette in the case of the #51. However, with the gaps reset, the Ferraris were able to claw their way back to the front through Sunday morning.
For a long while, it looked like a 1-2-3 finish was on the cards, but in the end there was one car which spoiled the party: the #6 Porsche Penske Motorsport 963. Kevin Estre, Matt Campbell and Laurens Vanthoor, who started at the back of the field after their exclusion from qualifying, provided the only genuine opposition to Ferrari in the second half of the race.
It took a near-flawless run to keep the pressure on Ferrari’s freight train and prevent a podium sweep. The three Porsche hopefuls kept their heads down and went on to claim second, clawing their way back into the fight for silverware in the final few hours through a mixture of pit strategy and consistent lap times.
It never truly looked on for the win, even as the three Ferraris switched places through the various pit cycles and the #6 was in the mix, but it wouldn’t have taken much drama for Porsche’s dream of a 20th overall win and Penske’s hopes for a first to go from dream to reality.
“It will hurt for a while, getting a chance like this and coming so close isn’t something that comes along every day,” Laurens Vanthoor commented in the press conference.
“We ran a perfect race today, with no mistakes, so we’ve got to be proud of what we achieved. We gave it everything,” Campbell added.
Third on the road and a further 14 seconds adrift was the #51 factory 499P of James Calado, Alessandro Pier Guidi and Antonio Giovinazzi, making it a double podium for the ‘Prancing Horse’. The defending race winners in the #50 were forced to settle for fourth after ending up on the wrong end of late switches in position orchestrated by the team in an attempt to catch and pass the Porsche, which ultimately failed.
“The #83 crew deserved this race; congratulations to them and Ferrari. To us, a podium is good for the championship. It was not an easy race, and every stint was a qualifying stint. We had issues, and we have to check the car now that it is back,” Giovinazzi said of the #51 crew’s performance.
“We all made mistakes, and it cost us, but it was good for the championship. I’m tired, I just want a beer and chill out,” Calado added.
Completing the top five was the #12 pole-sitting Hertz Team JOTA Cadillac, which, after losing the lead to the #5 Penske Porsche on the opening lap, failed to feature. Nevertheless, Alex Lynn, Will Stevens and Norman Nato leave France with their heads held high.
“It was our first time as Cadillac Hertz Team JOTA and top five is really very strong,” Nato explained. “Obviously, we’d prefer to be even further up front, but we gave it everything we had. We’ve fought really hard, and I’m very proud of the team for their performance.
“At this level, against so many other manufacturers, the competition is fierce. We had a clean race, clean driving, clean pit stop, no penalties. Finishing in the top five is a great result.
“We always push for more, but we gave it everything we had this week, so a big thanks to all the team and everyone involved in this project. They did a fantastic job since the start of the season.
“We’re just at the beginning of our partnership, and there’s so much potential to explore together. We’re just going to get better and better. We’ll be back next year to fight for the win.”
As a whole, it was a strange race in Hypercar. Plenty happened, but it was rarely entertaining lap to lap, stint to stint for viewers trackside and at home. The story of the race will always be Ferrari winning the ‘big one’ three times in a row, but Porsche’s efforts to make this a contest shouldn’t be ignored or forgotten. Without the #6, this race would likely have turned into a complete blowout.
The effort, the execution and the sheer prowess of Ferrari’s effort in Hypercar this year deserve plaudits. With wins at Qatar, Imola, Spa and now Le Mans to start the season, it’s going to take an almighty turnaround to prevent Ferrari winning the manufacturer’s title (it now has more than double Toyota’s points) and one of the 499P trios winning the Drivers’ World Championship.
Questions will almost certainly be asked of the Balance of Performance for this race, though, as it was far from being the ‘battle of the brands’ many expected.
Toyota, Cadillac and BMW (and to a lesser extent Alpine and Peugeot) came into June with a realistic expectation to fight at the sharp end, but the reality was that none of them were able to match or better the Ferrari freight train once the race got underway.
As a result, it remains to be seen which direction the overarching narrative for Hypercar and the way it is governed will head from here.
Off the lead lap, the #7 Toyota finished up sixth. The car sustained side pod damage and ultimately dropped back, incurring costly penalties for pit lane speeding and a full-course yellow infringement.
It fared far better than the #8 sister car though, which fell to 16th and seven laps down when a wheelnut failure forced Ryo Hirakawa to limp to the pit box from the Dunlop Bridge with three wheels on the wagon in the closing stages.
The #5 Porsche that raced off into the lead at the start off the back of an early push from Julien Andlauer ended up crossing the line seventh. Its weekend unravelled after the safety car restart, when it was handed a drive-through.
The #38 JOTA Cadillac, #4 Penske Porsche and #35 Alpine completed the top 10. For Les Bleus, it was not an easy outing but the A424 was night and day better than last year when engine failures forced both cars out early. It wasn’t the dream story or a podium on home soil for the Signatech-run team, but both cars made the finish this year and that was always the number one priority.
Both Alpines also finished higher up the order than rival French brand Peugeot, which again leaves Le Mans crushingly disappointed with 12th and 17th place finishes after penalties, incidents and mechanical issues marred its race.
BMW M Team WRT also suffered a heartbreaking end to its second Le Mans adventure with the M Hybrid V8. Both examples spent time in the garage, with an engine issue for the #20 and a hybrid cooling problem for the #15.
BMW Motorsport boss Andreas Roos described the event as “very tough.”
“We had four cars competing all week and in the race, fighting for good results. We had three cars with technical issues, one car with bad luck after hitting a rabbit at night. But we have to take the positives,” he said.
It was a better weekend for Aston Martin THOR Team, though. The two Valkyries made their debut at Le Mans. Bar a pair of punctures for the #007, it was a pretty quiet, metronomic race for the team, which heads back to base with mountains of valuable data to trawl through as it continues to improve its package.
Just two of the 21 starters in the top class retired. Both were Cadillacs, and both suffered power failures. The first was the WTR V-Series.R overnight, before the Action Express Whelen car ground to a halt on Sunday morning after completing 189 and 247 laps, respectively.
