The Lone Star Le Mans was overall a very solid race by any motorsport standard, an almost business-as-usual event for the majority of the six hours of action, with the occasional super-annoying safety car procedure to bog things down at times.
The race was unique in the sense that the finishing order for both Hypercar and LMGT3 was such that essentially all of the major players for the championship titles were left stuck in a Mexican standoff, with dry powder locked in their guns, ready to aim and fire again next time out at Fuji in three weeks’ time.
For Hypercar, the dramatic late-game hydraulics failure of the No. 7 Toyota TR010 with Nyck de Vries behind the wheel was truly a shocking moment that seemingly only the WEC can manage to produce at this kind of gut-wrenching level. There’s just something about racing for hours on end, seeing the checkered flag in your sights, and then suffering a cataclysmic breakdown that snatches defeat from the jaws of victory and is so amazingly painful to see happen, especially if you’re a fan for that team.
With the No. 7 biting the dust and dropping from P1 all the way down to the basement and a quick race retirement, coupled with the No. 20 BMW of Robin Frijns, René Rast and Sheldon van der Linde being left to struggle all weekend to run at the front of the pack, a P12 finish for the Belgian outfit meant that there was no change at the top of the Hypercar points standings once all was said and done.
For the Drivers’ title, it’s still Frijns and Rast in first with 75 points, tied with de Vries, Mike Conway and Kamui Kobayashi at 75 – count ’em – 75 points.
The sister car No. 8 TR010 did make up some ground with their P6 result, as the trio of Sébastien Buemi, Brendon Hartley and Ryo Hirakawa now sit fourth in the standings with 64 points, one point behind Sheldon van der Linde by himself for third (thanks to the rescheduled Long Beach/Imola clash back in April).
A P11 finish came with a pretty massive pit lane blunder for the No. 51 Ferrari of James Calado, Antonio Giovinazzi and Alessandro Pier Guidi, which saw them squander their pole-winning pace and overall ability to challenge for the win, leaving them to settle in fifth in the standings. Meanwhile the No. 20 BMW of Kevin Magnussen, Raffaele Marciello and Dries Vanthoor followed up their maiden victory at Interlagos with a P8 finish, giving them and the brand four points on the scorecard to help their efforts slightly.
The race-winning No. 50 Ferrari of Antonio Fuoco, Miguel Molina and Nicklas Nielsen got a major boost to their own championship aspirations and now sit seventh in the standings with 54 points to their efforts…
And in an illustration of just how damaging race retirements can be in a championship like this, the P2 finish from the No. 38 Cadillac Hertz Team Jota of Jack Aitken, Earl Bamber and Norman Nato earned 18 points from their result and more than doubled their points total thus far in the season.
The No. 38 suffered major punches-in-the-nuts at Spa and Le Mans, and damn would things be looking quite different if those breaks hadn’t gone against them in those instances.
That half of the Jota operation now sit P11 in the Drivers’ standings with 34 points (Aitken also missed the round at Imola for IMSA duties, giving him 30 points).
The way the results settled, there was more movement in the Manufacturers’ title fight with Toyota now holding a nine point lead over BMW, followed by Ferrari to round out the top before a larger drop down to Cadillac in fourth.
For LMGT3, the scene was nearly identical to Hypercar in the sense that the podium finishers had a great day to write home about, but the top two title contenders in the No. 33 TF Sport Corvette (P12) and the No. 92 Bend Manthey Porsche (P15) both were unable to build on their totals, finishing outside of the top 10.
According to SportsCar365.com, the Corvette’s received a 36kg Success Ballast adjustment following the last race out at Interlagos; the sister car No. 34 Racing Team Turkey by TF finished P14 at COTA (perhaps carrying around those extra 80 POUNDS!!!!!!! had something to do with it?).
The top of the standings is still occupied by all three TF Sport Corvette drivers separately, as the jumbled bits see of Jonny Edgar (P1, 76 points) Nicky Catsburg (P2, 72 points) and Ben Keating (P3, 54 points) settling in at first, second and third individually.
The big winners were of course Aston Martin and the dual-car Heart of Racing effort in bagging a double-podium result from the race-winning No. 27 (Mattia Drudi, Ian James and Zacharie Robichon) and the third-place finisher No. 23 (Jonny Adam, Kobe Pauwels and Gray Newell).
In another noticeable, almost under-the-radar type move of the day, it was the No. 21 Vista AF Corse Ferrari of François Hériau, Simon Mann and Alessio Rovera that finished fourth and managed to leap up the standings and now currently occupy the space behind the Fractured TF Sport Contingent.
Their Ferrari 296 GT3 Evo has finished inside the top 10 for all five races thus far in the season, and although it wasn’t a podium result, this stretch of consistency has brought 54 points to their scorecard and absolutely brings them into the championship fight.
The rest of the top 10 in the LMGT3 fight are as shown –
