In its 93rd running, one could hardly imagine there being so many firsts at the 2025 edition of the 24 Hours of Le Mans as the #83 AF Corse Ferrari 499P took the win with drivers Ye Yifei, Robert Kubica and Phil Hanson. Among them were the first victory for a privately entered Hypercar; the first overall victory for a Chinese driver (Ye); and the first overall victory for a Polish driver (Kubica).
There were superlatives as well. The race set a Hypercar distance record of 387 laps of the 13.626km Circuit de la Sarthe, and was knocking on the door of the outright record of 397 laps. Sebastien Bourdais set a new Hypercar race lap record of 3:26.063 in the Cadillac Hertz Team JOTA V-Series.R. And at 24:02:53.332, the 2025 24 Hours of Le Mans was the longest WEC race in history.
Oddities presented themselves also. While rarely does an overall winner come from outside the top-10 qualifiers, the #83 started 13th. Only twice since qualifying times were instituted to set the grid in 1963 has a winner come from farther back.
But the second-place #6 Porsche Penske Motorsports 963 of Kevin Estre, Matt Campbell and Laurens Vanthoor had to advance even further after having its qualifying times disallowed in the first of the three knockout qualifiers, departing the grid in 21st. With the third-place #51 Ferrari starting 11th, the average grid position of the overall podium was 15th.
However, there was also the familiar. Another Ferrari win at Le Mans with the 499P, the third in a row. But every year a different squad. Nine drivers that have raced a 499P at Le Mans now have Le Mans wins. But for Kubica and Ye, having come excruciatingly close to an LMP2 victory together five years ago, it was just a bit extra.
“It’s a special day, declared Kubica. “Since I started being here in 2021, I really enjoyed my first Le Mans, although it ended up in the probably most dramatic way, losing the win in the LMP2 category on the last lap. But I really enjoyed it, and felt like a small kid when I was racing in karting.
“But the difference was that I was already 36 years old, and the emotions that weekend gave me was something special. And this one for sure, will be emotional, but probably now is still a bit of tiredness and adrenaline.”
Kubica is now the first Polish driver to win Le Mans overall. It completes a redemption arc that includes one of the scariest crashes witnessed in F1 and a 2011 near-fatal rally accident. He made it back to Formula 1, but without the success of his previous stint with BMW Sauber, which included a Canadian Grand Prix victory. Incidentally, Kubica joins Fernando Alonso as the only driver to win an F1 race and the 24 Hours of Le Mans in the 21st Century.
As his final monster 3.5-hour stint came to a close with the end of 24 hours, Kubica could put to rest the memory of the Team WRT ORECA, which he shared with Louis Delétraz and Ye, rolling to a stop on the final lap while leading.
As could Ye, who on the eve of his 25th birthday would celebrate becoming the first Chinese driver to take an overall Le Mans victory. Ye and Kubica also carried the memory of the prior year, when the #83 had pace, leading 83 laps, but retired with a mechanical problem.
“Robert was joking with me, saying that twice we have raced together in Le Mans and we didn’t finish,” said Ye. “So hopefully this year is going to be different. I’m lucky that we finished the last lap this year. We know that Ferrari is very strong on this track … 51 crew won in 2023, 50 crew won last year. I’m just super proud to be able to help Ferrari make this three out of three.”
With the #6 Porsche only 10-15 seconds behind in the closing laps, the slightest wobble could have cost the #83 the victory. So Ye and Kubica’s previous experience was even on the mind of Phil Hanson, who already had a Le Mans victory after winning LMP2 in 2020 with United Autosports.
“The emotions probably haven’t really hit yet, just a lot of relief at the moment from those last few minutes,” Hanson expressed after the race.
“I was actually racing against [Kubica and Ye] when they broke down on the last lap, so I know Le Mans can break your heart at the last possible moment. I wasn’t going to celebrate or let anything out until the car physically crossed the line today. It was just relief, to be honest.”
Although Ferrari might have preferred one of the factory cars at the front – the #83 doesn’t earn Ferrari manufacturer championship points as a privateer car – three cars in the top four was reason to celebrate. In 2024, Ferrari scored first and third, with the #83 retired. Now it had all three cars running at the finish, and near the front.
“We are very happy with this third consecutive win at Le Mans,” stated Antonello Coletta, head of Ferrari Endurance and Corse Clienti. “In 2023, we returned to the top class winning; in 2024, we repeated it, and this year, we triumphed with the private team, the only one to field a 499P, albeit, of course, with our technical support.
“This result is proof of how Ferrari builds its cars and can bring both official cars and those of the clients to victory. This is a very important aspect, reflecting Ferrari’s history, because the DNA of our company was born with endurance and with cars driven by gentlemen and managed by private teams.”
Of course, for all those celebrating, there are more who came up short. Usually, that comes with some explanation of mistakes made, some bad luck that visited the team, maybe even some nefarious outside influence. Not from the #6 PPM crew.
“We tried everything to make their life as difficult as possible, and in the end, I think we can proudly say that we executed the perfect race,” claimed Vanthoor. “No mistakes, no contact, no off track, not a bad pit stop. Everything went super smooth, and that’s maybe why we’re sitting here in second place.
“But then, on the other hand, it’s also frustrating. When you run a perfect race and you don’t win … this is what it is. The best ones won today. It will hurt for a while to come this close. You don’t get that opportunity every day.”
As great as the disappointment may have been in not being able to deliver Porsche its 20th overall win, and finally give Roger Penske one of the few prizes missing from his trophy case, there was the recognition that the #6 crew achieved far more than they might have hoped. Challenging for victory with a gap of 14.084s after 24 hours of racing was an impressive achievement given they started from last in the Hypercar field.
“I think in the last four hours, things started to change really quickly,” Campbell explained. “The track temperature was rising quite rapidly at that point. We sort of stuck to the two-stint strategy at that point and committed to that more or less from early morning on. And I think this was really beneficial for us.
“We see the two red Ferraris really struggling there in the last three hours, there with the triple stint to be able to manage their tyres. This is where we could see that something was maybe possible to be able to reach a podium. With Kevin [Estre] finishing, he did a fantastic job.
“We’ve got to be proud of what we’ve achieved today as a team and as a group. We gave it absolutely everything. The others sort of tried to give it to us a couple of times with the amount of penalties they had; but nevertheless, we’ve got to be happy with what we’ve done.”
The two red Ferraris were simply not able to challenge the cars ahead at the end of 24 hours. While specific issues may not have been revealed, radio messages showed that the engineers in the pits knew that holding station was simply the right call.
Third for the #51 499P of Alessandro Pier Guidi, Antonio Giovinazzi and James Calado; and fourth for the #50 of Antonio Fuoco, Nicklas Nielsen and Miguel Molina was as good as it was going to get.
“I’m not sure that without mistakes we could have won,” said Pier Guidi. “Maybe we would have been closer and pushed even harder, but that’s how it went. It was a fiercely contested race—it felt like a qualifying race, and when you’re on the limit for 24 hours, mistakes can happen. I have to congratulate the #83 crew: they were fast and did a better job.”
For all the well-earned crowing Cadillac may have done after a front-row lockout in qualifying, the V-Series.Rs simply didn’t demonstrate the race pace to be in the fight at the end. Fifth for the #12 Cadillac Hertz Team JOTA V-Series.R of polesitter Alex Lynn, Will Stevens and Norman Nato was as good as it got.
“Overall, I’m feeling satisfied. We came here and put on a really good show and a huge amount of effort,” said Lynn after the race.
“Our potential was definitely clear on Thursday and it’s a moment I won’t forget. We finished inside the top five behind three very strong Ferraris and a Porsche. I think we maximised everything we could this weekend. We go home with our heads held high.”
The #12 Cadillac was the last Hypercar on the lead lap, so it wasn’t the multi-manufacturer battle that many expected, nor did it match last year’s nine cars on the same circuit. But neither did the race run for hours behind the safety car due to the weather.
Despite the Ferrari dominance, there were solid performances all around. Every manufacturer got a car to the finish, and in fact, all of them saw at least two cars running at the end – including Alpine, which had both cars out within six hours last year. Both of the newest Hypercar entries, the two Heart of Racing Aston Martin Valkyries, ran for the 24 hours as well.
But in the end, Ferrari’s dominance of the 2025 WEC season continued. Even if it didn’t score the double manufacturers’ points for a win, they left the other manufacturers scratching their heads trying to figure out how to beat the boys from Maranello and Piacenza, especially at Le Mans.
