Photo(s) of the weekend - I

This weekend was clearly all about Le Mans, so everything here is coming from the Circuit de La Sarthe, in France, as this June 13th and 14th won’t be out of the Porsche staff and fans’ heads so soon.

We needed to wait 16 years until Porsche come back to top level sportscar racing with the 919 Hybrid model, and 17 years until the 17th Porsche victory at Le Mans come, which was in great style, against all bets, as the No. 19 machine, the third manufacturer car used only at Spa and the 24 Hours of Le Mans, won with authority with drivers coming from distinctive environments, as Formula 1 driver Nico Hülkenberg teamed up with Porsche Supercup specialist Earl Bamber and GT ace Nick Tandy to make an almost flawless performance.

Normally you won’t bet your bucks in the third car, but most of the time was with the third entries of Porsche and Audi (No. 9 R18 e-tron Quattro) changing the lead, normally because of the pit-stops, with the No. 7 car, a normally sure card for the win, sneaking between the two. But the fact was that Audi couldn’t cope with the pace and realiability of the third Porsche, as crashes, failures and the whole pack of problems hit the Ingolstadt family.

In the final hours, the lead 19 Porsche was followed by the No. 17 one (here, more seventeens), and the situation persisted until the final flag.

Every driver made history by himself today. Earl Bamber won his first LM24, still in his rookie year, as well as Hülkenberg, which was the first active F1 driver to win the LM24 since Bertrand Gachot and Johnny Herbert, who won with the powerful Mazda 787B in 1991. Tandy finally wins his first overall LM24, as well in his rookie LMP1 year, as the Brit already had a stint as a GTE driver last year.

OWNER NOTE:

To see how many years have passed since Gachot/Herbert and Hülkenberg’s feats, my age is exactly this time gap.

PHOTOS: FIA, Porsche AG