BMW drivers admitted to feeling “hurt” by their narrow loss to Toyota in the Le Mans 24 Hours, having led various chunks of the race.
The factory #20 BMW M Hybrid V8 shared by Robin Frijns, Sheldon van der Linde and Rene Rast finished second in the 94th endurance classic, just 10.9s behind the winning #7 Toyota TR010 Hybrid of Kamui Kobayashi, Mike Conway and Nyck de Vries.
The German manufacturer remained in the lead battle throughout the twice-round-the-clock enduro, fighting for the top spot with the two Toyotas and the #12 Cadillac in a four-horse race.
The pendulum swung throughout amid temperature changes and caution periods, but BMW lacked the pace on Sunday afternoon to score a first overall win at La Sarthe since 1999.
Frijns also lost crucial time in a scruffy in-lap with three hours left on the clock, although he was able to pass the #8 Toyota of Sebastien Buemi in the final stint to claim second.
While Frijns said BMW can be proud of what it achieved on its third Le Mans appearance with its LMDh prototype, given the car’s previous struggles, he was ultimately frustrated to miss out on victory.
“Of course, the disappointment is a bit higher than the happiness,” he said. “It’s been a long 24-hour race. A lot of ups and downs. We’ve been very strong at the beginning, with taking the start and taking the lead directly and slightly pulling away from the field, so we were very hopeful.
“Then we had some… I wouldn’t say issues, but the pace dropped a bit. And in the night we came back and Toyota suddenly was there.
“So, I think generally it was a good race for the fans to watch. It was never really boring. But it’s a bit painful to finish P2 in a race where only P1 counts, even when you are 10 seconds behind the leader.
“It’s the way it is. We need to come back next year. But I’m definitely proud of all the BMW people. They gave us a car to compete at the front end of the field, and I think we should be happy.”
Winners #7 Toyota Racing Toyota TR010 Hybrid: Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi, Nyck De Vries, second place #20 BMW M Team WRT BMW M Hybrid V8: Robin Frijns, Rene Rast, Sheldon Van Der Linde, third place #8 Toyota Racing Toyota TR010 Hybrid: Sebastien Buemi, Brendon Hartley, Ryo Hirakawa
Photo by: Marc Fleury
BMW entered the Hypercar class in 2024 after focusing its efforts entirely on IMSA’s GTP class in its first season with the M Hybrid. However, the programme received limited success early on, and it wasn’t until last month’s Spa round that BMW scored its first top-class WEC win.
“On one hand, it’s a huge success to our project because till today we had never finished in Le Mans without a technical issue.
“We came here with a clear goal. We wanted to finish in the top five. Now we even reached the podium. We were close to even winning the race, so it’s a huge success.
“On the other side, if you can win Le Mans, you want to win Le Mans. We were close and that hurts because you never know when you get this chance in your life back again. You can see I’m not the youngest anymore.”
Van der Linde echoed the comments of his team-mate saying, “It’s our first podium in Le Mans, so we can be very proud of that. But at the same time, losing out with 10 seconds, it hurts.
“We just didn’t have enough in the tank in the last few stints unfortunately. But we are hungry to come back.”
BMW Motorsport boss Andreas Roos had “no regrets” about finishing second, but felt the deployment of the second safety car with six hours remaining compromised the chances of the #20 crew.
“During the two safety cars, we were quite unlucky,” he explained. “The final safety car, which messed it up a bit for us because there we were a bit on the back foot.
“Shortly before the safety car, we had quite an advantage in track position, but we had a small disadvantage in energy.
“But the safety car basically took the track position advantage completely away to zero, and we only had the disadvantage in energy left.
“And then we had to see that we come back into the same rhythm of the others in terms of energy. So then you start to do 13 lap stints again and so on.”
But asked whether BMW would have won without the safety cars, he replied: “No, I would not say so because that’s too much. I would have brought us into a different situation. But you can never say because of this, we would have won.”
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