2026 Le Mans 24hrs | PH Review

Ten years after its last-lap heartbreak, Toyota triumphed at Le Mans. Here's how the weekend unfolded...

By Cam Tait / Thursday, 18 June 2026 / Loading comments

Friday 13th

Nothing caps off the drive down to Le Mans quite like the Classic British Welcome. Hundreds of cars from both sides of the English Channel descend on the village of Saint Saturnin, just north of Le Mans, with everything from rare Euro classics to American muscle on show. As ever, there were some properly bonkers creations whipped up by the locals, including a Dakar-style Renault Twingo in full Rothmans garb, plus numerous French fancies like an original Alpine A110 rally car and a seldom-seen Venturi Atlantique.

Having fuelled up on coffee and pains au chocolat, it was time to head into the circuit for a couple of car launches. With the influx of manufacturers over the last few years, Le Mans has become a sort of second French motor show, with this year’s race seeing the release of BMW’s M Concept Neue Klasse - with all the details provided by Sam S here - while Genesis cemented its intentions of becoming a proper performance brand by unveiling its Magma GT3. Based around last year’s Magma GT concept, the GT3 machine looks every bit the real deal, right down to the bumper-mounted spotlights used for 24-hour endurance racing. No word yet on whether it’ll make production, but with two cars in the Hypercar class for 2026, the next logical step would be to bookend the grid with a GT3 car, surely?

Meanwhile, Toyota was very keen to show off the progress it has made with hydrogen combustion technology. News broke over the weekend that, from 2030, hydrogen prototypes would be permitted on the Le Mans grid, which neatly coincided with the first demo laps of the company’s TR LH2 Racing prototype. It’s essentially a hydrogen-combustion version of the firm’s Le Mans hypercar, emitting near-zero exhaust emissions without losing the deep boom of the race car's petrol V6. Toyota executives told PH that 90 per cent of combustion engine parts can be carried over to a hydrogen powertrain, and the hope is that lessons learned from its H2 racing programmes will eventually trickle down into its passenger cars - and that’s what Le Mans has always been about.

Saturday 14th

Waiting for the race to start at 4pm on Saturday afternoon feels like an age. Anticipation builds throughout the day, starting with a handful of support races before the full grid of 62 cars is let loose for a 15-minute warm-up at midday. That’s a blink of an eye in Le Mans terms, with a quick lap taking around three minutes and 30 seconds, but it’s enough for the teams to check their cars are in working order and for the drivers to get a feel for the conditions.

It’s hot. Really hot. The sort of heat that chews tyres and pushes engines to their limits, but Toyota’s drivers tell us in a media briefing before the race that they’ve geared their setups towards the sweltering conditions during the race, and not for the cooler temperatures during qualifying. The company’s new TR010, which is essentially a heavily modified version of the two-time Le Mans winning GR010, lines up 14th with the number seven car with the number eight one spot behind. Yet Brendon Hartley, driving the eight car, tells us that hardly any work was put towards qualifying, with the team instead setting the car up to manage the hot conditions. Even starting towards the back of the grid, the drivers knew they were in with a decent chance of winning.

An agonising wait ensues during the ten minutes it takes for the cars to complete the formation lap and the flag falling. Unlike a Formula 1 start, where a race can be won or lost at the first corner, the opening laps of Le Mans are all about survival. Leaving turn one dead last but unscathed is far better than mucking up a dive bomb for the lead and smashing into half the grid. Yet, knowing that the world’s greatest race is about to get underway and that anything can happen over the next 24 hours, you can’t help but pin your excitement on the outcome of the first corner.

First corner shunts are rare at Le Mans, and everyone gets through the first lap without any dramas. The pole-sitting number 15 BMW drops to fourth, having been leapfrogged by the sister 20 car and the number 12 Cadillac, while the 38 Caddy, having started 10th after being disqualified from the Hyperpole qualifying shootout, begins making its way through the field. The Aston Martin Valkyries, which had looked rapid in testing, gradually drifted backwards into the clutches of the ever-disappointing Peugeots, while newcomers Genesis managed to hold its own in the top ten during first few hours.

Toyota, meanwhile, played an absolute blinder by pitting the number eight car early during the first hour of the race, putting it into clean air where it could exploit its pace advantage in the hot conditions. Moments later, it’d be leading the race, with the seven car around 40 seconds behind. However, by pitting early, Toyota was now on the ‘alternate strategy’, or motorsport speak for being out of kilter with the rest of the pack. So when the lead Toyota came in for a pit stop, the 20 BMW would move back into the lead, only to surrender it when its time came to change tyres and fuel up.

As night fell, the conditions began to cool and, as predicted, the BMWs and Cadillacs began reeling the Toyotas in. Then, ten hours into the race, a costly error from the number eight Toyota saw it overrun Mulsanne Corner and flat-spot its front tyres, promoting the 12 and 38 Caddys into the race lead. And where’s Ferrari in all this? Having won the last three Le Mans on the bounce, the outfit’s trio of 499Ps were fighting towards the lower end of the top 10 during the first 12 hours, but were bit-by-bit chipping away at the front runners as dawn approached.

Sunday 15th

A bit like a child running downstairs to open their presents on Christmas morning, Sunday morning at Le Mans gets underway with an early(ish) alarm and frantically searching for news on the night stint. A power steering failure had put the number 38 Cadillac, which had been vying for the lead, out of contention in the early hours of the morning. That sadly meant no winner’s trophy for former F1 driver Sebastian Bourdais, the Le Mans-born driver with 19 starts to his name but only a single class win in 2016. That elusive outright win would have to wait yet another year, though the number 12 car kept Cadillac on top through the morning hours.

However, you only get a real sense of who’s going to win in the dying hours. A late Full-Course Yellow puts the 12 Cadillac out of contention, leaving the two Toyotas and the number 20 BMW to fight it out for the win. At Toyota, nerves are at an all-time high. Ten years ago, on the brink of its first Le Mans win, the leading number five ground to a halt on the start line on the final lap in one of the race’s most famous heartbreaks. It’d then go on to win five on the bounce between 2018 and 2021, but the near silence in the pit garage on the final couple of laps shows that 2016’s gut-wrenching defeat still hangs over the team.

As the number seven car approaches the final chicane, the team slowly begins cheering before the whole garage erupts as driver Kamui Kobayashi takes the chequered flag. It’s win number two for Kobayashi and teammate Mike Conway, and a first Le Mans victory for third driver Nyck De Vries. It’s clear there’s more to this win than the ones that came before, partly because it’s finished running up twice in the last three races at la Sarthe, but mainly because it proves that, even with stiff competition, it’s still one of the very best at executing a 24-hour race. Toyota’s party line all weekend was that it doesn’t care about winning, so long as learnings from the circuit can carry over to its road cars. But judging by the explosion of pure relief in the pit garage at the chequered flag, you just know it mattered more than any of them were letting on.