‘Mixed emotions’ for BMW after Le Mans near miss

Sunday evening brought forth complex feelings from BMW and Team WRT, after finishing second in the 94th 24 Hours of Le Mans with the No. 20 BMW M Hybrid V8 of Robin Frijns, René Rast, and Sheldon van der Linde.

In the closest Le Mans finish since 1969, the No. 20 BMW finished second, just 10.913 seconds behind the winning No. 7 Toyota Racing TR010 Hybrid. It was BMW’s best Le Mans finish since it won in 1999, and the best result at Le Mans by far for the BMW M Hybrid V8 in three attempts.

“We have mixed emotions,” Rast explained. “On one hand, it’s a huge success for the project because previously we hadn’t finished without a technical issue, and we came here with a clear goal: we wanted to finish in the top five. Now we even reached the podium and even came close to winning the race, so it’s a huge success.

“But on the other side if you can win Le Mans, you want to win, and we came close. And that hurts, because you never know when you will get the chance in your life again.”

The three-time DTM champion still ranks this result as one of the highlights of a distinguished endurance racing career which includes wins in the 24-hour races at Spa-Francorchamps at the Nürburgring, and a class win in the Rolex 24 At Daytona.

“For sure, it would have ranked higher if we would have won the race,” Rast said. “But nevertheless I think an overall podium in Le Mans is something you can be proud of, and which has not been on my list so far. I finished second in LMP2 one year, but not overall, so it’s quite high on the list.

The safety car intervention for Ayhancan Güven’s crash with six hours to go proved to be a turning point as it erased a 45-second lead and put the No. 20 BMW on the back foot strategically, though Frijns would close down the gap to Kobayashi over the final hour of the race.

“We were in the front group the whole race long until the second safety car, which then ruined a bit of our strategy and put us quite down,” Rast noted. “It’s racing, it’s Le Mans, and anything can happen in Le Mans. Sometimes you are lucky, sometimes unlucky – Le Mans chooses the winner, we have often heard that, and it’s true. This time it wasn’t us.

“Without the second safety car, we would have been in a very good position.”

Frijns echoed the sentiments of his co-driver, saying post-race, “The disappointment is a bit higher than being happy, but for sure tomorrow that will all change.

“We’d been very strong at the beginning, taking the start and taking the lead directly and slightly pulling away from the field so, we were very hopeful,” said the past LMP2 class winner. 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.

“It was never really boring, even at the end. I believe all the fans enjoyed the view. But it’s a bit painful to finish P2 in a race where only P1 counts.”

Both BMW Hypercars showed strong performance though the No. 15 WRT BMW retired due to electrical problems in a race that had already been lost due to a costly puncture from a collision with an LMP2 car in the first quarter.

BMW M Team WRT might have missed out on Le Mans victory in the closest finish since 1969 but team principal Vincent Vosse insists there is "no regret" team principal Vincent Vosse said. “There is no reason to be disappointed; We did a very strong race, I think a faultless race. Everything was super strong, and there are some races where you finish second, especially ten seconds behind after 24 hours, it’s sometimes quite difficult to swallow.

“But in this case, it’s a very easy one to swallow, because there is no regret; I always say you need always a bit of luck, a bit of things to go our way. It did not go our way, but it will go our way another time.”