Sophia Flörsch: German racing driver crashes in the legendary 24

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Sophia Flörsch (archive image)

Photo: Thomas Pakusch / imago images / Pakusch

For racing driver Sophia Flörsch and her women's team, the 24 Hours of Le Mans ended in a crash.

When heavy rain set in over the Circuit de la Sarthe that night, the 20-year-old was involved in an accident.

The Argentine Franco Colapinto had previously lost control of his Oreca and also tore Flörsch off the track.

When Flörsch was maneuvering after the collision, the Briton James Winslow caught the German's car from the side in the Ligier, and the bolide was thus out of the race.

Flörsch was examined in the Medical Center, but gave the all-clear a little later.

For the first time, the Munich resident has a regular cockpit in the DTM, but interrupted her season in the touring car for the Le Mans adventure.

As with her debut last year, she competed with Tatiana Calderon (Colombia) and Beitske Visser (Netherlands) for Richard Mille Racing.

The trio drove in the second strongest vehicle class, LMP2.

Double victory for Toyota

Flörsch had a serious accident in Formula 3 on the narrow street circuit in Macau in November 2018.

She suffered a fracture of the spine and had to be operated on for 11 hours.

In April 2019 she made her comeback.

Toyota celebrated its fourth win in a row at Le Mans, and both of the Japanese cars were in the lead in the end.

The trio of Kamui Kobayashi (Japan), Jose Maria Lopez (Argentina) and Mike Conway (Great Britain) prevailed over last year's winners Sebastien Buemi (Switzerland), Kazuki Nakajima (Japan) and Brendon Hartley (New Zealand).

The dominance does not come as a surprise, however, in the highest prototype class (hypercar) Toyota was represented as the only works team and thus clearly favored: Since the exits of Audi (2016) and Porsche (2017), the Japanese have only had to compete with a few private teams, this year there were only five hypercars at the start.

But that will change in 2023.

Just in time for the 100th anniversary of the 24 Hours of Le Mans, three heavyweights are returning to the endurance race: Porsche (19 overall victories), Audi (13) and Ferrari (9) are the most successful brands in the history of the classic.

bka / sid