How Ferrari dominated Le Mans with Kubica but saw Porsche pose its biggest threat yet

Ferrari made it three out of three at the Le Mans 24 Hours since its comeback to the top of the sportscar tree. Yet its victory in the World Endurance Championship blue riband event this time around was quite different from those that preceded it. For a start, the honours went to the yellow Ferrari, the so-called customer car run like the factory cars by AF Corse. But more to the point Ferrari was dominant in a way that it wasn’t in 2023 or ’24.

The irony was that the margin of victory was closer than in each of the past two years. The winning 499P Le Mans Hypercar shared by Robert Kubica, Yifei Ye and Phil Hanson claimed honours by a fraction less than last year, 14.084s compared with 14.221s – in 2023 its margin was up at over a minute. But a Ferrari victory never really looked in doubt from two or three hours into the race as its satellite entry and the two red factory cars that ended up third and fourth monopolised the top of the leaderboard. The 499Ps between them led 277 of event’s 387 laps.

The 499P was the fastest thing around the 8.47-mile Circuit de la Sarthe over the course of the 93rd edition of the 24 Hours. It was fast enough to beat the best of the Porsche 963 LMDhs driven by Kevin Estre, Laurens Vanthoor and Matt Campbell — and it should have been more comfortable than it was – and significantly faster than everything else.

Predictions that this was going to be a race fought out by perhaps five or six of the Hypercar class manufacturers proved ill-founded. Toyota, the marque that had pushed Ferrari so hard in ’23 and ’24, was not in the game, and nor were Cadillac, Alpine and BMW. That was the harsh reality even if Caddy did have a car among the five that finished on the lead lap.

Porsche was in the mix, though only for short periods of the race – including the all-important crunch laps as the clock ticked down. But it owed its position in among the Ferraris as much to the issues the Italian cars encountered along the way as its own pace. The #6 Porsche finished the race without a scratch upon its bodywork and its solitary delay came with a slow puncture early in the race. That wasn’t the case for the Ferrari flotilla.

Each of the Ferraris had to take penalties for various offences over the course of the race, and there were offs and technical issues, too. Whether they ultimately decided the outcome of the race is difficult to say, because the fastest 499P won. The #83 car had the edge on the #51 entry shared by James Calado, Antonio Giovinazzi and Alessandro Pier Guidi that ended up third and fourth-placed #50 driven by Antonio Fuoco, Nicklas Nielsen and Miguel Molina.

Fastest of the nine Ferrari drivers over the race was Kubica, with #83 having the narrowest of edges when all three drivers were taken into consideration. The Formula 1 race winner had a couple of tenths on the two Antonios, Fuoco and Giovinazzi, the fastest drivers respectively in #50 and #51. The trio of cars from the Prancing Horse were, meanwhile, separated by mere hundredths on the averages of all three drivers.

Kubica and co’s factory ‘team-mates’ were happy to concede that the winning Ferrari was the quicker car, and had been since the Test Day on the Sunday ahead of race week. “Since the test, we knew they had something on us and their speed was impressive,” said Calado. “We were struggling with the balance of the car, weren’t particularly happy with the rear end, myself more than Gio and Ale. We thought the race would be cooler and the rear grip would come, but it never did.”

Kubica revealed that he felt confident over the final couple of hours despite the close proximity of the Porsche. “I knew what I was playing for,” said the 40-year-old, who was in the cockpit of the #83 car for almost three hours at the end. “I knew that without a mistake, a technical issue or a DNF, I could bring it home. I’m happy that I didn’t do any mistakes after driving a lot of hours.”

“When we retired here on the last lap in ’21 [in his maiden Le Mans with WRT] I was convinced the LMP2 winners got a Rolex. When I was told they didn’t I felt a bit better about it. This is special, to have the win and the Rolex” Robert Kubica

“It’s a big one and I’m happy to have the Rolex,” he said of the victory and the watch given to the overall winners. “I went to the Daytona 24 Hours to win a watch [in 2021] and it didn’t work out. When we retired here on the last lap in ’21 [in his maiden Le Mans with WRT] I was convinced the LMP2 winners got a Rolex. When I was told they didn’t I felt a bit better about it. This is special, to have the win and the Rolex.”

It wasn’t all plain sailing for the drivers of the #83. Ye was bumped out of qualifying in the Hyperpole 1 session on Thursday. He encountered a mechanical issue, a leak of some kind that wasn’t fully explained, that left him 13th on the grid. The #83 was joined on the sidelines for ‘H2’ by #51 in which Pier Guidi ended up 11th on what turned out to be a bad day for Ferrari: Fuoco could only put the #50 car seventh in the final round. That wasn’t what was expected from the kings of WEC qualifying.

There was also a gearbox issue, affecting the downshift, that had to be carried through the race, two penalties and a quick off for Hanson at Mulsanne Corner during the night. The one and only safety car of the race, which occurred in hour 11 didn’t help either. The customer Ferrari lost an advantage of nearly two minutes over #51 and more than that over #50 as a result.

Porsche kept the pressure on Ferrari throughout, but needed the #83 to lose time to properly challenge late on

Photo by: Marc Fleury

The third-place Ferrari bore the brunt of Ferrari’s problems. Among its delay was a 20s penalty for exceeding the pitlane speed limit by 13km/h (8mph), but the turning point in its race came just after 11am on Sunday. Pier Guidi had been running at the front with 20 or so seconds over Ye when he was required to make an emergency stop for a splash of fuel during a quick-fire Full Course Yellow virtual safety car. On his way back in for his stop proper at the end of the next lap, he looped it in the pitlane entry. A 20s lead became a 25s deficit, with Pier Guidi now in third behind #50.

There was another problem for #51 over the final stages. Ferrari had to manage an engine issue, which it didn’t fully explain though suggested it was linked to the flat-out nature of a race undertaken in hotter than usual temperatures. It was “an incidental issue that required monitoring”, Ferrari sportscar racing technical director Ferdinando Cannizzo, but one that “didn’t cost any performance”. Yet the #51 car ended up third after getting past the #50 when Fuoco went off on his out-lap following this final stop.

The myriad of problems that allowed the Porsche to get ahead of the works Ferraris meant there was no chance for any team orders to be invoked. Radio communications broadcast in the final hours suggested it was something in mind and it is fact that Hanson was asked to move over for a red car during the night. He didn’t do so, though his off at Mulsanne shortly after the request removed the need.

Porsche was in the mix only for short periods of the race and, beyond the first couple of hours, only with the #6 Porsche Penske Motorsport entry that finished second. On Sunday morning it appeared that Estre and Vanthoor with new team-mate Campbell were going to repeat the car’s fourth place from last year until it came alive in the final hours.

The Porsche was at its most competitive in the heat of the day, witness the opening exchanges of the race. Julien Andlauer took the #5 car into the lead from third on the grid, while Estre made amazing progress from the rear of the Hypercar pack: he’d been thrown to the back of the grid when his Porsche had been found to be underweight after opening qualifying on Wednesday.

As the race entered its final stages, the #6 car switched strategies. It went from tripling the medium compound Michelin to doubles and definitely no fuel saving. “It was full push, quali lap after quali lap,” said Estre, who drove the car to the flag. “That was our only chance against Ferrari: to try to put pressure on them. They had the upper hand by so much that it would have been strange for them to lose all of that advantage in the last couple of hours. Second is a good result, but I’m not pretending we were in contention to win. It looks close on paper, but that’s because they made a lot of mistakes.”

Toyota was unable to feature at the front compared to previous years, as it felt a lack of top speed blunted its charge

Photo by: Rainier Ehrhardt

The kind of errors that Ferrari made also removed any chance the other two PPM entries had of a top six. The #5 car shared by Michael Christensen, Julien Andlauer and Mathieu Jaminet ended up a lap down in seventh, the additional entry for Le Mans shared by Nick Tandy, Felipe Nasr and Pascal Wehrlein ninth. There were a couple of penalties for the former and an unlucky sequence of events for the latter around the halfway mark. The car lost time in a Slow Zone, a local FCY, then with an emergency stop in an FCY and finally during the solo safety car.

Even if Porsche didn’t have a car to beat the Ferrari, it was clear of the rest of the pack. Twelve months before, Estre and Vanthoor, then sharing with Andre Lotterer, languished some way behind Ferrari and Toyota. This time, the 963 was a more raceable machine thanks to increased straightline speed, a result of Porsche’s efforts that included an aero revision for this year under the evo joker rules to which it finally admitted at Le Mans. There was also a bit of help from the power gain element of the Balance of Performance, which adjusts maximum power above 250km (155mph): Porsche had plus 1.4% power this year, whereas last year it neither lost nor gained.

There were two kinds of car at Le Mans in 2025, reckoned Toyota Gazoo Racing Europe technical director David Floury: those that were quick in the straight line and those that weren’t. And Porsche was in the good kind along with Ferrari. Asked after a race in which the best of the GR010 HYBRID LMHs, #7 shared by Kamui Kobayashi, Mike Conway and Nyck de Vries, finished sixth, Floury said: “From Tertre Rouge to the first chicane, from the first chicane to the second chicane…” You get the idea.

Cadillac didn’t deliver on the one-lap pace that allowed Alex Lynn and Earl Bamber to lock out the front row for Jota. The Caddy didn’t have the race pace of the Ferrari or the Porsche

Toyota had a significant increase in its base power – it was up on the 520kW (697bhp) class maximum but lost 1.3% of it above 250. Ferrari had a minus 2.9% figure, yet was quickest through the speed trap on the first leg of the Mulsanne Straight. It tried to play down its advantage, pointing out that official top speed table can be distorted by who got a tow and who didn’t. The #50 and #51 cars were at its top on 349km/h (216mph), but a look across the race they were regularly above 340km/h.

Toyota might have taken fifth from the #12 Jota Cadillac V-Series.R LMDh with #8. The car shared by Sebastien Buemi, Brendon Hartley and Ryo Hirakawa ended up 17th after losing 20 minutes with a slow lap and some quick repairs after the Japanese driver lost his front left wheel coming out of the pits in hour 21. Toyota didn’t go into detail about the problem, only pointing out that one of the team’s wheel change mechanics had been injured at a previous pitstop and had been taken to hospital.

Cadillac didn’t deliver on the one-lap pace that allowed Alex Lynn and Earl Bamber to lock out the front row for Jota. The Caddy didn’t have the race pace of the Ferrari or the Porsche, but team boss Sam Hignett still reckoned it was a good day for an operation in only its fourth race with the Caddy. He also pointed out that the car was nearer the pace than last year. It was three tenths shy of the Ferrari, compared with over a second when Ganassi was still running the programme.

The pair of Jota Cadillac’s impressed with a front row lockout, but just didn’t have the pace to match it in the race

Photo by: Marc Fleury

Everyone else was a bit player at Le Mans this year. And that included Alpine and BMW, two manufacturers that took the fight to Ferrari the previous time out in the WEC at Spa in May. The #35 A424 LMDh shared by Charles Milesi, Charles Habsburg and Paul-Loup Chatin snuck into the points with 10th after fight back from two early penalties and hybrid cooling issue.

The two WRT BMW M Hybrid V8s LMDh both made long pitstops in the closing hours, the issue for #15 hybrid cooling and engine related problems for #20, on the way to 18th and 19th respectively. Only the Action Express Racing and Wayne Taylor Racing Cadillacs were non-finishes. Both went out with engines failures, which appear to have been identical.

Peugeot wasn’t on the pace with its 9X8 2024 LMH. It was down on power and up on weight in the Le Mans-specific BoP from class maximum and minimums with which it has been a regular podium challenger in WEC since the end of last year. Aston Martin wasn’t on the pace with the Valkyrie, but it reckoned getting two cars to the finish without problems save for a couple of slow punctures was a step in the right direction.

That’s something that WEC organisers the Automobile Club de l’Ouest and the FIA didn’t manage for Le Mans this year. They were further from the money on the BoP than last year, even with a year’s worth of experience with power gain after its introduction last year. Le Mans 2025 wasn’t the race the world had been hoping for.

Ferrari took the spoils for the third straight Le Mans 24 Hours – with a rethink to BoP the area of focus for organisers

Photo by: Alexander Trienitz