Porsche Won Le Mans 24 Hours (but That Wasn't the Race You Were Watching)

Matt Posky
by Matt Posky

While Porsche saw a remarkable comeback victory at this year’s 24 Hours of Le Mans, clawing its way from the back of the pack as practically every LMP1 class car suffered a catastrophic breakdown, all the real action was taking place among the LM GTE Pro cars — as usual.

Jordan Taylor, masterfully piloting the No. 63 Corvette, kept himself in the lead for much of the race but everything morphed into a sphincter clenching contest in its final moments. Aston Martin had already suffered a nail-biting off with its No. 95 car, but it was the No. 97 Vantage of Jonathan Adam that had us cursing near the race’s end. Attempting a bold and ill-advised maneuver, Adam managed to pass Taylor momentarily by diving on the inside and exiting the corner wide. The two cars even made light contact as the Corvette retook the lead and everybody in the pits started screaming.

DRAMA AGAIN! pic.twitter.com/3YyGmFPTRb

— FIA WEC (@FIAWEC) June 18, 2017

Adam continued hounding Taylor around the track until the Corvette ran through some gravel and a left-front puncture became apparent. While it’s unclear if the gravel caused the blowout or a preexisting flat caused the car to hit the rocks, the Vette was now in serious trouble. Taylor was able to keep the Aston from passing for a time, Adam passed him easily on the straightaway at the beginning of the final lap.

By now it was clear the Corvette had suffered additional damage from running through the rocks and was in a bad way. You didn’t need a stopwatch to know that Taylor’s last lap was significantly slower and you could visibly see the car coming apart around the bum tire. The Chevy’s limping lap gave the No. 67 Ford GT and Harry Tincknell an opportunity to pass, relegating Taylor to third place in the GTE Pro class.

However, it probably would have been Ford’s race had officials not forced the GT to don an extra 20 kilograms of weight and undergo a horsepower reduction as a way to level the class. Close races are always more fun, but you hate to see an icon neutered for the sake of fairness.

Still, it was a much more exciting than watching all the LMP1 cars’ hybrid systems break down over and over. Congratulations to Porsche for having an extremely fast car that didn’t spend quite so much time in the pits as the rest of its prototype category.


[Image: FIAWEC]

Matt Posky
Matt Posky

A staunch consumer advocate tracking industry trends and regulation. Before joining TTAC, Matt spent a decade working for marketing and research firms based in NYC. Clients included several of the world’s largest automakers, global tire brands, and aftermarket part suppliers. Dissatisfied with the corporate world and resentful of having to wear suits everyday, he pivoted to writing about cars. Since then, that man has become an ardent supporter of the right-to-repair movement, been interviewed on the auto industry by national radio broadcasts, driven more rental cars than anyone ever should, participated in amateur rallying events, and received the requisite minimum training as sanctioned by the SCCA. Handy with a wrench, Matt grew up surrounded by Detroit auto workers and managed to get a pizza delivery job before he was legally eligible. He later found himself driving box trucks through Manhattan, guaranteeing future sympathy for actual truckers. He continues to conduct research pertaining to the automotive sector as an independent contractor and has since moved back to his native Michigan, closer to where the cars are born. A contrarian, Matt claims to prefer understeer — stating that front and all-wheel drive vehicles cater best to his driving style.

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  • Kendahl Kendahl on Jun 18, 2017

    Long ago, Le Mans had everything from Ferraris and Jaguars to Austin Healey Sprites on the course simultaneously. Coping with traffic was a significant hazard. In one of its attempts to provide "cheap" racing, the SCCA created Showroom Stock. Buy a street legal car, install safety equipment and go racing on street tires. The first thing that happened was that tires were trimmed to half depth to improve handling. (Actually a good idea since racing loads tended to tear chunks out of the tread.) Then, teams with the right connections would go through parts warehouses, weighing and measuring parts to get the combinations that gave the best performance. It was balancing and blue printing without a machine shop. Even though it was still legally stock, a car built up this way had a nearly insurmountable advantage over one bought off a dealer's lot.

  • Dukeisduke Dukeisduke on Jun 19, 2017

    I'm still mad that the ACO screwed the Corvettes with the air inlet restriction. They favored makes that run in the WEC (Corvette doesn't), so the Corvettes got screwed.

  • CanadaCraig You can just imagine how quickly the tires are going to wear out on a 5,800 lbs AWD 2024 Dodge Charger.
  • Luke42 I tried FSD for a month in December 2022 on my Model Y and wasn’t impressed.The building-blocks were amazing but sum of the all of those amazing parts was about as useful as Honda Sensing in terms of reducing the driver’s workload.I have a list of fixes I need to see in Autopilot before I blow another $200 renting FSD. But I will try it for free for a month.I would love it if FSD v12 lived up to the hype and my mind were changed. But I have no reason to believe I might be wrong at this point, based on the reviews I’ve read so far. [shrug]. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it once I get to test it.
  • FormerFF We bought three new and one used car last year, so we won't be visiting any showrooms this year unless a meteor hits one of them. Sorry to hear that Mini has terminated the manual transmission, a Mini could be a fun car to drive with a stick.It appears that 2025 is going to see a significant decrease in the number of models that can be had with a stick. The used car we bought is a Mk 7 GTI with a six speed manual, and my younger daughter and I are enjoying it quite a lot. We'll be hanging on to it for many years.
  • Oberkanone Where is the value here? Magna is assembling the vehicles. The IP is not novel. Just buy the IP at bankruptcy stage for next to nothing.
  • Jalop1991 what, no Turbo trim?
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