A bit late as I was celebrating and partying with Porsche and then travelling.
A few points.
919 #2's victory is a result of the whole team, not just drivers but the mechanics. The front end swap was supposed to be a 2+ hour job, they did it in half the time, fantastic effort.
The #8 Toyota suffered basically the same problem, but the Toyota crew took longer, or more like the standard time to fix the car. They were not prepared in simple words.
#7 Toyota had a clutch problem, nothing to do with the hybrid system.
#9 Toyota had a blow tire that caused irreparable damage, also not the fault of the hybrid system.
#1 Porsche had a ICU problem, aka gasoline engine, so not about the hybrid system either.
In the end, the extreme heat had caused some problems with the hybrid race cars, but really they are fine for the last what, 4 years?
Brendon's charge up the field was epic, Timo continued that. But they never gave up, it's a 24 hour race and they gave everything even after losing more than an hour. This is called racing, one never ever give up.
Hurley Haywood called the result way before the start. I had a chat with him Friday afternoon during the parade and he said plainly that the Toyota drivers were driving their cars too hard, they will break. And they did.
I also had a chat with Walliser while the race was going on, I mentioned what Hurley said and he said they cannot bank on competition falling out, they had to do their best and mind their own race, the repairs on the #2 car proved their point.
I was on hand for the last 3 victories, they all have very different feel. For 2015, there was no doubt Porsche was gonna win. For 2016, there was no doubt that Porsche wasn't going to win but surprisingly they did. For 2017, there was no doubt that it will go down the wire and it did.
On to the RSRs.
Both had driver errors. #92 hit the curb at Porsche Curves a bit too hard for the last time and took a weird hop and crashed out. #91 was driven way too hard to stay competitive and the tires gone and then had untimely puncture to add salt to the injury.
Overall I think the RSR are quite competitive, they came alive during the night. The torque deficit to the turbo-ed competition wasn't that bad. But they definitely sounded the best. If only ALL the cars at Le Mans sounded that good!
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