Many ask themselves why Le Mans has managed to survive with such popularity and one of the best answers to that question has to do with a short, but intense word: drama.
There's no better way of describing how the 2016 edition of the 24-hour battle ended - Porsche sneaked right past Toyota, with the Japanese racecar losing power on the penultimate lap of the race.
It was almost surreal when Kazuki Nakajima announced his gas pedal had lost its powers after 23 hours and 58 minutes of fierce battle. Many aficionados expected the Japanese carmaker to grab this year's LMP1 title.
This expectation came to be after Anthony Davidson out on a remarkable show early on Sunday, when he passed Mark Lieb's 919 Hybrid. Nakajima later took over the no. 5 Toyota TS050 Hybrid, building what appeared to be a secure lead.
Third place went to the no. 6 Toyota, but this came four laps behind, after Kobayashi had visited the pits due to a spin only three hours before the grand finale.
As for last year's champions, Brendon Hartley, Mark Webber and Timo Bernhard, they were forced out of the fight due to a faulty water pump, exiting the stage after just nine hours.
So, while Porsche's victory doesn't look like the clear P.W.L.M. success Zuffenhausen registered last year, we're still dealing with the automaker's 18th overall Le Mans trophy and the premises for an interesting streak of wins (Porsche only returned to the Circuit de la Sarthe in 2014, remember?).
For Audi, though, the 2016 race was the first that saw the automaker being kept away from the podium since the German entered Le Mans back in 1999. After a turbo failure sent the no. 7 R18 out, the no. 8 Audi, which was no match for the battling Porsches and Toyotas, came in fourth, but at a noticeable distance.
The LMP2 class saw Nicolas Pierre (having raced with Stephane Richelmi and Gustavo Menezes) grabbing the win in the Signatech Alpine A460 Nissan, but we'll need to look to the GTE Pro category for the other big news of this year's race.
We're talking about Dirk Muller's win, which saw Ford grabbing the trophy 50 years after its infamous Ferrari one-upping move, with the No. 68 Ford Chip Ganassi Racing Ford GT bringing home the title. The win was anything but easy, as the team battled Ferrari 488 GTE-running Risi Competizione over most of the race. Yes, fans of the 2017 Ford GT are going crazy!
Nevertheless, in the GTE-AM class, Jeff Segal brought the victory for Scuderia Corsa in the No. 62 458 Italia shared with Bill Sweedler and Townsend Bell. This is where Porsches and Aston Martins seemed to experience one troublesome moment after another.
Whether you watched the race for your favorite team, or simply enjoyed adrenaline-packed moments such as the Audi R8 safety car powerslide in the wet (video below), this year's race has kept us all on our toes.
In his quest to bring you the most impressive automotive creations, Andrei relies on learning as a superpower. There's quite a bit of room in the garage that is this aficionado's heart, so factory-condition classics and widebody contraptions with turbos poking through the hood can peacefully coexist. Full profile
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