Toyota returned to the top step of the podium at the Le Mans 24 Hours after a three-year absence. Finally, the Japanese manufacturer triumphed against factory opposition, which was not the case as it mopped up in the dying days of LMP1 and first years of the Hypercar era. Win number six on the Circuit de la Sarthe has to be the most significant given that it beat seven other manufacturers rather than a smattering of privateers. Yet that’s not how Toyota saw it as it came home first and third in the World Endurance Championship blue riband on the second weekend of June.

A Le Mans win is a Le Mans win, insisted David Floury, technical director of the Cologne-based operation now known simply as Toyota Racing. “Any victory at Le Mans is an achievement because the race is something exceptional and because of the things you have to face,” he said in the run-up to this year’s event. Afterwards he invoked the adage that, “Le Mans chooses its winner” as Kamui Kobayashi, Nyck de Vries and Mike Conway took the laurels, with the second Toyota TR010 Hybrid Le Mans Hypercar coming home third.

Floury returned to the backstory of Toyota’s 2021 Le Mans triumph, when the team had to overcome a fuel filter problem that had gradually reduced the length of its stints from 13 to just three laps. It triumphed because it came up with a series of fixes that ensured it didn’t have to stop in the pits to change the offending items with the loss of 40-plus minutes. One involved asking the drivers to turn the fuel pump on-off under heavy braking multiple times every lap, the other developing new software on the hoof to get all four fuel pumps to run at once.

The result was a 1-2 for Toyota in the first year of its current WEC contender, then known as the GR010. This time, Toyota had to be equally resourceful with the renamed and rebodied version of the car. There were problems to overcome on both cars, ones that might have stopped a lesser team in its tracks.

The winning Toyota was hit by a problem with one of the driveshaft torque sensors that monitor power delivery in real time for WEC organisers the FIA and the Automobile Club de l’Ouest. It struck as early as nine o’clock on Saturday night and explained why Kobayashi and his team-mates didn’t look like genuine contenders for victory until deep into the race. Resourcefulness by Toyota explained why it emerged as a potential winner.

The glitch resulted in the car’s software going into default mode to ensure the hybrid powertrain stayed under the maximum power laid down by the Balance of Performance. This meant a decrease in power for the winning Toyota that, Floury pointed out, led to a significant reduction in straightline speed. It was as much as 5mph down on the sister car at one point during the race.

“A decrease in power for the winning Toyota led to a significant reduction in straightline speed.”

The malfunctioning of the torque sensor, a standard part mandated by the organisers, wasn’t entirely consistent. “At some point it decided to partially come back,” explained Floury. But the issue still required close monitoring and management.

“We identified some patterns that were triggering it to go into default and we were briefing the drivers not to go into those specific conditions,” added Floury. “We managed to survive with decent power for the remainder of the race, but it was a bit up and down. There were some periods where we were running normally, others when we were down on power.”

The other No8 Toyota led much of the first two-thirds of the race until it had a very different problem. When the wheels came off the car at a pitstop late in the 18th hour, it was noticed that there were metal filings on the inner surface of one of the rims. Something had been trying to machine its way through the left-front wheel.

Toyota’s investigations took it out into the pitlane. A rogue screw was found at the front of its pit stall. The next step was to identify exactly where it had come from. That involved examination of a spare corner, ready assembled and sitting in the back of the pits. It was traced to the brake cooling drum, and it turned out that, in fact, two screws had come loose.

“Without the safety car, Toyota almost certainly wouldn’t have won Le Mans this year.”

The problem was fixed over the course of two pitstops. The first cost the car a minute, but the second took place under the safety car, which meant little except track position was lost. It was a stroke of luck for Toyota. A two-minute time loss would have put No8 out of the game.

Without the safety car, Toyota almost certainly wouldn’t have won Le Mans this year. It probably wouldn’t even have finished on the podium. The extra minute lost by No8 would have shuffled it down the order, while the winning No7 wouldn’t have made up the time lost not only to the sensor problem but also an early puncture after de Vries took over from starting driver Conway.

Honours probably would have gone the way of BMW and the WRT-run M Hybrid V8 LMDh shared by René Rast, Robin Frijns and Sheldon van der Linde. It lost a 20sec lead with safety car number two after moving to the front when the BMW came alive in van der Linde’s hands on Sunday morning. Yet when push came to shove through the last hours of the race, the BMW didn’t quite have the pace of the winning Toyota. Frijns kept Kobayashi honest over the final stints rather than putting him under real pressure. He was trailing by 20 or so seconds until the Toyota driver eased off over the closing laps to win by 10.9sec. That was just 3sec fewer than the 13.8 by which Audi prevailed over Peugeot in their classic 2011 confrontation, making this the closest timed finish in Le Mans history.

“It mattered little that Aitken’s pole position had been scrubbed for an error in the pitlane.”

It was a “dagger to the heart,” said hometown hero Bourdais, who was racing at Le Mans for the 19th time. “For maybe a $2 piece, it came to a crushing end. We seemed to have a lot of pace, but I don’t know if we were quicker than the Toyota.”

What Bourdais should have said was whether he and his team-mates could have been quicker than the winning Toyota over the last quarter of the race. Over the first half of the event, the No38 was nip and tuck with the No8 Toyota. They were separated not by tenths or hundredths but by thousandths on the averages.

No one else was in the game at Le Mans this year. That included Ferrari, which was seeking a fourth straight victory with its 499P LMH. The Italian manufacturer and the AF Corse factory team tried mixing it up on tyre strategies, but to no avail. The best it could manage was fifth with the No51 entry shared by Antonio Giovinazzi, James Calado and Alessandro Pier Guidi on a day when it appeared to be hamstrung by the Balance of Performance, something that wasn’t in the public domain this year. The car lacked a little in acceleration and straightline speed, suggesting it was down on power to its strongest competitors. It also barely ran on the softest of the three compounds of Michelin slicks. That more than hinted that the 499P was running heavier than its rivals.

Ferrari’s lack of pace fuelled the idea that the organisers wanted an LMDh car to win Le Mans this year, yet it didn’t turn out that way. That it didn’t came down to Toyota’s ingenuity and the fortunes of war around the Circuit de la Sarthe.