For most of this year’s 24 Hours of Le Mans, any one of BMW, Cadillac, or Toyota could have taken ultimate victory – but the harsh truth is that there can only be one winner, and after the race, drivers and representatives of BMW and Cadillac were left feeling in some part accomplished, but more so lamenting what could have been.
BMW’s runner-up finish was not only the German manufacturer’s best result at Le Mans since it won in 1999, but a career best for three-time DTM champion, former Spa and Nürburgring 24H winner René Rast. It’s a highlight of the German’s great career.
“For sure, it would have ranked higher if we would have won the race,” Rast said. “But nevertheless I think an overall podium in Le Mans is something you can be proud of, and which has not been on my list so far. I finished second in LMP2 one year, but not overall, so it’s quite high on the list.”
Rast, Robin Frijns, and Sheldon van der Linde’s #20 BMW M Team WRT Hybrid V8 finished just under 11 seconds behind the winning #7 Toyota Racing TR010 Hybrid of Mike Conway, Nyck de Vries, and Kamui Kobayashi – the closest Le Mans finish since 1969, closer than 2011 and 2025.
After a rapid start from Rast put the #20 BMW up front, it later became WRT’s sole challenger for the win after problems plagued the pole-winning #15 car. But the Safety Car for Ayhancan Güven’s crash with six hours to go erased a significant lead and put BMW on the back foot the whole race.
“We were in the front group the whole race long until the second Safety Car, which then ruined a bit of our strategy and put us quite down,” Rast explained. “It’s racing, it’s Le Mans, and anything can happen in Le Mans. Sometimes you are lucky, sometimes unlucky – Le Mans chooses the winner, we have often heard that, and it’s true. This time it wasn’t us.
“Without the second Safety Car, we would have been in a very good position.”
Frijns echoed the sentiments of his co-driver after a late push to overtake the #8 Toyota and close the gap down to the leading #7. “The disappointment is a bit higher than being happy,” said Frijns.
“We’d been very strong at the beginning, taking the start and taking the lead directly and slightly pulling away from the field so, we were very hopeful. Then we had some, I wouldn’t say issues, but the pace dropped a bit, and in the night we came back, and Toyota suddenly was there.
“It was never really boring, even at the end. I believe all the fans enjoyed the view. But it’s a bit painful to finish P2 in a race where only P1 counts.”
BMW M Team WRT Team Principal Vincent Vosse, meanwhile, could still take a lot of enjoyment in what was objectively the team’s best result since the WEC debut of the BMW Hypercar programme. “There is no reason to be disappointed,” Vosse said.
“We did a very strong race, I think a faultless race. Everything was super strong, and there are some races where you finish second, especially ten seconds behind after 24 hours, it’s sometimes quite difficult to swallow.
“But in this case, it’s a very easy one to swallow, because there is no regret; I always say you need always a bit of luck, a bit of things to go our way. It did not go our way, but it will go our way another time.”
Likewise, Cadillac put forth its strongest collective showing at Le Mans since bringing the V-Series.R to the race for the first time in 2023, but was disappointed not to come away with the win.
Collectively, Cadillac Hertz Team JOTA’s cars combined to lead 178 out of 381 laps at Le Mans, but its sole surviving #12 car of Will Stevens, Norman Nato, and Louis Delétraz finished off the podium in fourth, while the #38 team was left heartbroken after a terminal power steering problem ended what had been a very competitive race.
Nobody embodied the #38 team’s heartbreak like Sébastien Bourdais – who saw perhaps his best and last chance at a long-awaited overall win evaporate on Sunday morning.
“Probably (by) 2020 I’d pretty much given up ever getting that chance ever again, and this year, it was there,” lamented the three-time overall runner-up (for Peugeot) and 2016 GTE Pro class winner.
“This race has got its ways to humble everything and everyone, and for a maybe two-dollar piece, it just came to a crushing end. I’m not gonna understate it. It’s a big blow.”
Bourdais, Jack Aitken, and Earl Bamber completed only 218 laps before the #38 car formally retired.
“I’m 47 years old. I’m not gonna get many of those opportunities. But it’s racing, you know. Michael Andretti’s gone, what, 20 times to the (Indianapolis) 500? And never got it. Some races just decide to turn its back on some guys, and smile at others, it is what it is. You win much fewer than you lose in a racing career. And that doesn’t make you a better or worse driver, it’s just part of the journey.
“And sometimes, it’s incredibly cruel.”
On the side of the fourth-place #12 JOTA Cadillac, Will Stevens said it was “pretty disappointing to come away with P4. I think honestly we deserved more than that.
“The pace we showed we should have been on the podium at least. We are more in the mix than last year which is a positive. But coming here, we had higher hopes than the result we ended up with, so we can’t help but be disappointed. But we’ll come back again next year stronger.”
A small consolation, at least, was scoring the best result of the year for Cadillac Hertz Team JOTA in what had been a frustrating start to the year, compounded by the next injury which has kept Alex Lynn on the shelf all season so far.
Cadillac Wayne Taylor Racing also put together a much stronger showing in its second Le Mans as it hoped, finishing in ninth place, two laps off the lead.
But it could have been more for Filipe Albuquerque and the Taylor brothers, Ricky and Jordan. The #101 WTR Cadillac picked up three separate drive-through penalties in the morning hours for speeding under either a Full Course Yellow or a Slow Zone, preventing a possible top-five run. They were also caught out by a full course yellow at the end of a pit window during the first few hours.
2015 Le Mans GTE Pro class winner Jordan Taylor said during the race, “We had the pace at the beginning of the race and in the night. We had one little mistake that put us back early on; in a race like this, once you get out of track position, lose that gap, and, if then you get the wrong slow zone and wrong traffic, then it kind of builds from there.
“We were on the back foot at that point, and then this morning had a couple issues of our own. We spent the last two or three stints kind of working for the No. 12 car, kind of tire testing for them to see what’s gonna work for them at the end of the race.
“It has been definitely frustrating because I feel like, had we not had one of those infractions, we wouldn’t have lost a lap in the night and then the safety car this morning would have put us right back in the fight of the top five.”
After the chequered flag, Taylor remarked, “It’s unfortunate, but ultimately a good experience for everyone. I think we learned a lot that we can take back to the IMSA side and hopefully close out the season with some good results for Cadillac.”
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