08/22/2021 11:01 AM
Clarín.com
sports
Updated 08/22/2021 11:03 AM
Argentine breast.
José María López
won this Sunday
the 24 Hours of Le Mans, one of the most demanding and most coveted events in world motorsport. The Cordovan won aboard the Toyota GR010 number 7 that he shared with the Englishman Mike Conway and the Japanese Kamui Kobayashi and was finally able to remove his thorn after several frustrated attempts. In addition, he became
the second Argentine to win the mythical French track
after the success of
José Froilán González
67 years ago.
Pechito López and company, who had just won the 6 Hours of Monza, surpassed the Toyota number 8 by two laps, made up of the Swiss Sebastien Buemi, the New Zealander Bertrand Hartley and the Japanese Kazuki Nakajima, the winning team in the 2020 test, that he suffered an incident at the start on Saturday, which forced him after a crash caused by the Glickenhaus N.708 to stop to restart his systems.
It took 16 laps to regain second place on the starting grid
.
Also two laps away,
the Alpine run by André Negrao, Nicolas Lapierre and Matthieu Vaxiviere
completed the podium among the Hypercar, the top category in this competition
.
Now, in addition, the Argentine, the English and the Japanese are the leaders of the World Endurance Championship (WEC) organized by the International Automobile Federation (FIA)
The No. 7 Toyota took a lead on the start at Le Mans.
Photo: EFE
It is a vindication for the native of Río Tercero, one of the best exponents of national motorsport who only needed to reach Formula 1.
The unforeseen had been betraying him at Le Mans.
In 2019, a puncture took him the victory and in 2020 he was at the forefront when an engine failure delayed him, so his car finished third.
It was not all tranquility for the Toyota.
After 16 relatively calm hours at the helm of the 89th edition of the 24 Hours of Le Mans, cars No. 7 and No. 8 experienced supply problems this Sunday morning that rekindled doubts about their reliability.
It is the first season of the Toyota GR010, which is part of the new Hypercars introduced in 2021, and its first participation in the 24 Hours.
"Therefore we can still discover unexpected things," warned technical director Pascal Vasselon on Friday.
And indeed, around 9 in the morning local (4 in Argentina), the mechanics of the Japanese team could no longer fully fill the tank of No. 8 and later of No. 7, which forced to cut their relays.
"An improvised solution seems to have stabilized the problem,"
said a spokesman for the Japanese team an hour later.
However, this circumstance did not affect the provisional general classification of the test with 5 hours to go.
And it didn't affect the final result either, which found Kobayashi at the wheel of the winning vehicle while Conway and Pechito melted into a hug in the pits.
An unforgettable moment.
"For a motorsports driver, racing Le Mans is already very special, too important. The World Endurance car was born as the Le Mans car and the rest of the races are those that prepare you for Le Mans. It is a whole year. of preparation. Of hours, hours and hours. Of nights. Of risks too, because we do tests at night for 36 hours without stopping and when it is winter there can be fog, rain and four degrees below zero and we continue to walk in the car at any time At night. Really when the moment comes, you look back and you realize that the important thing is coming, that all those hours are going to be defined in those 24 Hours. And I think that also makes it very special, "
he had said. Pechito to
Clarín
in an interview conducted at the start of the championship.
López also reached 8 victories in the WEC and is the top Argentine winner in the category. In addition, he already has four world titles.
He was the one who spent the least time of the three drivers in command of the car, but who was in charge of the most complicated moments, since he drove during much of the night and early morning, when the conditions at Le Mans are the most complex for drive the vehicles forward.
Pechito drives overnight at Le Mans.
Photo: AP
A little history
200 kilometers from Paris, in western France, the 24 Hours of Le Mans were held for the first time in 1923 and soon attracted riders from around the world who dreamed of dominating the semi-permanent La Sarthe track for a whole day. On May 26 of that year, 33 cars of 18 brands started and it was the locals René Léonardy and André Lagache, with a 3-liter Chenard, the winners at an average of 94 km / h.
With the passage of time, the test also attracted the great brands and the best pilots in the world, including several Argentines, although (for now) only one emerged victorious from there. On June 13, 1954, with a Ferrari 375 Plus that he piloted with the Frenchman Maurice Trintignant, Froilán González won the mythical race that Juan Manuel Fangio had to abandon the four times he tried, the last one in 1955,
when it took place. the greatest tragedy in motorsports.
The best performance after that was in the hands of Santa Fe Oscar Larrauri.
The driver who is now in the sights of the Justice accused of money laundering was the one who participated the most times (9) and in 1990 he finished second in the Porsche 962 that he drove with the Spanish Jesús Pareja and the Swiss Walter Brun.
Drivers like Carlos Reutemann passed in between, while before Pechito joined the powerful Toyota team, the last national representative had been Luis Pérez Companc in 2014.
The 24 Hours of Le Mans are also of particular interest, as they are part of the Triple Crown
with the Indianapolis 500 and the Monaco Grand Prix of Formula 1, a symbolic trophy that only has one winner:
the British Graham Hill for almost 50 years
.