Hybrid high: Porsche clinches 18th overall victory at 24 Hours of Le Mans

LE MANS, FRANCE—It is kind of surprising, sometimes, Porsche’s position in the world automotive market. It is high up there in the luxury segment, but that isn’t really why most people used to buy the little handfuls from Stuttgart.

They were tight well-built machines that had a personality different from anything on the road. They could be temperamental in terms of handling, what with an engine hung out past the rear wheels that could easily cause an uncommitted driver to start pendeluming through a curve. But they populated racetracks all over the world.

And if you asked race car drivers why they used them, more often than not you would hear them talk about reliability, solid build quality, buying a product whose company wanted you to run their cars as hard as you could and win with them.

Luxury? That’s not what got them here, the 24 Hours of Le Mans. The most grueling endurance sportscar race there is covering 5,233 kms in total, one where they have to put two chicanes on the long straights just to keep the car speeds low enough to be survivable.

The race is run for a full 24 hours beginning at 3 p.m. on a Saturday afternoon and ending a full day on a 13.6 kilometer long circuit, 9.2 kilometers of which are on normally public roads.

It is a mechanically devastating race, and replacing parts that may break down means you lose any chance at a decent finish.

You have long stretches interrupted by frenzied braking that create a heat range so wide most brakes simply can’t operate in the heat.

Or the cold. If you have ever seen photos of racecars driven in the middle of the night with brake discs glowing while flying through the rain, that was probably on the Mulsanne straight at Le Mans.

The leading cars will go as fast as 340 kilometers an hour down to as slow as 70 on every lap, for almost 400 laps.

Gearboxes will experience over 25,000 shifts up or down.

Formula One driver Mark Webber, driving for Porsche, lost three kilos of body weight in last year’s race, and this is with modern conveniences like flowing air and water that were used only for the car and not the pilot.

Le Mans is a crazily taxing endeavor all around, and Porsche cars hold the record with 17 overall victories.

Note that we say cars, not the Porsche company or the Porsche team. After a 16-year break, the company only returned to Le Mans in full to compete for the top category of LMP1 in 2014.

Before that, it was mainly racers who bought their own cars and ran their own races and won their own trophies.

Porsche came back as a factory-backed team in 2014, and won one-two-three in 2015—with a Hybrid.

From a luxury brand bought mostly by people who will never even go near a racetrack, the German carmaker was a heavy favorite to win the 2016 race.

But Le Mans throws you curves both literally and figuratively.

Rain came down in qualifying, which meant no teams could improve on their best times and the starting grid had the three top LMP1 teams (all running hybrid engines) almost in formation at the front—two Porsches, two Toyotas and two Audis.

As the Rolex official clock approached the 3 p.m. starting time, rain came down yet again, and the race was begun behind the safety car.

Several laps were run at this slower safer pace as the rain stopped and the track dried, but not quickly enough for the leaders who were asking the safety car (an Audi R8) to pick up the pace as they were going too slow for their systems to work.

Long stints behind a safety car force the teams to recalculate their pit stop and fuel strategies on a constant on-the-fly basis, and this would come into play more severely later in the race.

The number one Porsche 919 suddenly came into the pits, was checked, and then put up on lifters—which left their number two car to battle for first against the two Toyotas.

Things continued on this way as dark came, with the three lead cars switching places but generally staying at the front of the pack.

When the hard-working Toyota cars suddenly began staying out longer between fuel stops than the other cars (they stayed out for 14 laps, the others 13) this signaled a key advantage for the Japanese works team.

The number one Porsche eventually came back out on track but was no longer in contention for the lead, and the number 7 Audi also went in for lengthy pit work.

The two Toyotas began to dominate, being the only top team with two cars at the front.

In the last quarter of the race, the number two Porsche managed to secure second position between the two Japanese, but it was clear that the Toyota Hybrid number 5 was increasing its lead.

Porsche race engineers did multiple recalculations and simulations, trying to figure out if they would have a chance to catch the leading Toyota. There was a bold decision to go for it all, and the number 2 Porsche started pushing.

The gap was almost a minute between the two lead cars, but it was closing.

Remember though that this was a race that had been going on for approaching a full day. Even though the decision was made to risk the Porsche’s running dry before the end of the race at the pace they were doing, they pressed on.

There were uncharacteristic smiles in the Toyota pits, this team had been working for years, and they were coming close to achieving their goal of a Le Mans win.

At the Porsche tents, things were getting quiet and tense. This was in contrast with the evening before. The Porsche hospitality tents were full and busy, the Toyota areas almost empty as everyone was behind the doors hard at work.

Then the number 5 car suddenly started slowing. The Toyota team’s faces turned grave, the Porsche team’s almost in shock. Number 5 continued to slow down, and it looked like it lost power. This was literally the last couple minutes before the Rolex clocks all signaled the end of the race, and the number 2 Porsche began aggressively running through the corners and over the curves.

The Toyota TS050 Hybrid driven by by Kazuki Nakajima stopped as it entered its final lap, then started again.

The number 2 Porsche 919 Hybrid with Neel Jani at the wheel charged forward and took the lead flying past the hard-working but distressed Toyota.

The Germans screamed. The Japanese were in tears. The stands all around Le Mans were in shock. Everyone, even those surrounding the team suddenly in the lead for that very last and most important lap, felt nothing but support and sympathy for Toyota.

This 2016 running of the mythic race had everything but, happily, serious injury. There was unpredictable weather. There was the hard-working Toyota team with a much-deserved victory just one lap away. There was the favored Porsche team making an unexpected all-or-nothing charge to the finish. There was a team running with a quadriplegic race driver, Frederic Sausset in the open-top Morgan in LMP2. There was argument over which cars truly belonged in which classes as you had modern smaller engines running against massive old-school motors. You had the Americans returning in force to contest LM GTE Pro class with a bunch of Ford GTs.

But this race was designed to test everything—man, machine and organization—to the limits, and that is what happened to just about everyone.

Porsche took Le Mans for the 18th time, Toyota took second place, and Audi third.

Everyone felt deeply for the Toyota Gazoo Racing team, who worked long and hard and brought forth a strategy and execution that made them truly the team to beat this year.

That is another key component of legendary Le Mans. Heartbreak.