Toyota's Youngest Driver Risked Everything To Beat Ferrari At Le Mans

Just a little less than two hours shy of the end of the centenary 24 Hours of Le Mans, Toyota told 29-year-old Ryo Hirakawa to take “full risk” to catch the leading No. 51 Ferrari about 15 seconds up the road. Tasked with extracting the maximum from a car that was very tricky under braking, the Toyota driver lost it in a crucial moment at Arnage that ultimately decided the race.

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Brendon Hartley, Hirakawa’s teammate in the No. 8 GR010 Hybrid that capped a heroic quadruple stint before handing the car off to its final driver of the day, told the media following the race that Hirakawa didn’t push any harder than his team asked him to. Courtesy Motorsport.com:

“It came to us a bit at the end, with the hotter track temp, and the last few stints I did were the best I’ve done, I just did qualifying lap after qualifying lap. I knew if we could just put them under some kind of pressure, we knew they had the pace advantage, but we did everything, we threw everything at them.

“We put Ryo in and said ‘look, full risk, maximum attack, we want to win the race’ and he had a little accident, it happens, and it could’ve happened to any of us and it did happen to many guys out there over the 24 hours.”

Credit: FIA World Endurance Championship via YouTube

Hartley said he experienced the very same flightiness approaching Arnage, Circuit de la Sarthe’s tightest corner. Hirakawa admitted he felt pressure taking the reins from Hartley, but that sensation melted away once he was in the car. “I didn’t expect that behavior through [Indianapolis corner] and that was related to the crash,” Hirakawa said to the website. “I still don’t know what happened there. I tried my best, I gave it everything, but it didn’t come.

Making the loss even harder to take, the #51 Ferrari had a longer-than-planned last pit stop about an hour later, when Alessandro Pier Guidi’s 499P failed to launch from its stall. The team had to power cycle the car for the second time in the race, which added crucial seconds to the winning chassis’ time. Had Hirakawa not had the off — and his No. 8 Toyota not had to spend three minutes in the garage having the ensuing damage repaired — that could’ve been the hiccup that cost Ferrari its first Le Mans overall victory after a half-century absence.

Photo: Ker Robertson (Getty Images)

But this has kind of been Toyota’s bag at the world’s greatest endurance race over the years. Sure, Gazoo Racing won five in a row after becoming the lone, uncontested factory team in the event’s top class in 2018. But wounds like 2016’s don’t heal easily. The Japanese automaker also had a shot at snatching the hardware from BMW way back in 1999 with the gorgeous GT-One, until an untimely puncture deflated driver Ukyo Katayama’s late-race charge.

That’s Le Mans. Anyone could’ve won this race going in. Ferrari had speed and fortune on their side. Porsche massively disappointed, while Peugeot, having qualified 10th and 11th, found itself challenging at times against all expectations. This was a great Le Mans — easily the best in years, though of course that’s not saying much — and it’ll be a long wait until 2024 to see what Lamborghini, BMW and Alpine bring to the fray.