2019 24 Hours of Le Mans
The round was the last race in the 2018–19 FIA World Endurance Championship and the second time in the season that the series had visited Le Mans.
The Signatech Alpine team of Nicolas Lapierre, André Negrão and Pierre Thiriet won the Le Mans Prototype 2 (LMP2) category with the Jackie Chan DC Racing Oreca 07 car of Ho-Pin Tung, Gabriel Aubry and Stéphane Richelmi second.
On the 70th anniversary of Ferrari's first overall Le Mans victory the AF Corse team won the Le Mans Grand Touring Endurance Professional (LMGTE Pro) class with James Calado's, Alessandro Pier Guidi's and Daniel Serra's 488 GTE Evo from a Porsche 911 RSR driven by Richard Lietz, Gianmaria Bruni and Frédéric Makowiecki.
It was later disqualified for an oversized fuel tank and Project 1 Racing's Porsche of Jörg Bergmeister, Patrick Lindsey and Egidio Perfetti inherited the class win.
Porsche's Michael Christensen and Kévin Estre finished tenth in LMGTE Pro to claim the GTE Drivers' Championship with 155 points.
LMGTE Pro class race winners Calado and Pier Guidi passed Bruni and Lietz to end the season in second place.
The dates for the 2019 24 Hours of Le Mans were confirmed at a meeting of the FIA World Motor Sport Council in its headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland on 19 June 2017.
[4] 38 points were available for the final race, which meant Conway, Kobayashi and López could win the LMP Drivers' Championship if they won and Alonso, Buemi and Nakajima finished eighth or lower.
Full course yellow flags mandating cars to slow to 80 km/h (50 mph) in the event of an accident were implemented for the first time at Le Mans.
[15] The Spirit of Race team announced the withdrawal of their Ferrari 488 GTE Evo on 21 March, citing "an unavoidable family commitment" as the reason.
[16][17] On 16 April, on the day that the ACO announced that two additional temporary pit garages would be constructed to raise the number of cars for the event to 62, the No.
Matt Campbell of the Dempsey-Proton team helped Porsche to be fastest in LMGTE Am ahead of Giancarlo Fisichella's Spirit of Race Ferrari and Pedro Lamy's No.
[29] Krohn was transported to The Centre Hospitalier Du Mans for observation and FIA medical personnel advised him to desist from racing for one week.
99 Dempsey-Proton Porsche was later withdrawn because the team did not wish to elevate the car to the LMGTE Pro class with Krohn's co-drivers Patrick Long and Niclas Jönsson as a duo.
66 Ford had an earlier excursion when driver Olivier Pla spun into the gravel trap at the exit to the Porsche Curves and hit a tyre barrier.
7 Toyota's monocoque was replaced due to a deep crack discovered during an inspection; Conway and González shared responsibility for the crash and the former incurred a suspended three-minute stop-and-go penalty.
[41] Following qualifying, the stewards deleted all of the Graff team's fastest lap times from the third session after driver Vincent Capillaire failed to stop at the scrutineering stand at the entry to the pit lane for a weight check.
95 Aston Martin on the inside before Indianapolis corner, as Lapierre and Fisichella moved to the front of LMP2 and LMGTE Am on pit stop rotation respectively.
[52] A full course yellow flag was activated 3 hours, 42 minutes in after the left-front tyre was punctured on de Vries' Racing Team Nederland Dallara car.
Job van Uitert's G-Drive entry, which had taken the lead of LMP2 from Lapierre's Signatech car, incurred a ten-second stop-and-go penalty taken at its next pit stop because his co-driver Vergne was observed speeding during the full course yellow flag.
Porsche sought to conserve tyre wear and fuel usage rather than challenge for the lead in LMGTE Pro, promoting Laurens Vanthoor's No.
[62] As the safety cars were recalled, the gap to López and Nakajima had fallen to ten seconds and Bleekemolen had extended the lead over Jeff Segal's No.
Light rain began to fall soon after, catching out Laurent who spun after braking for the second Mulsanne Straight chicane and veered right into a barrier.
After racing resumed, López used slower traffic through the second Mulsanne Straight chicane to pass his teammate Nakajima for the overall lead.
[64][65] López was forced to relinquish the overall lead to Nakajima in the eighth hour when he ran wide into the Mulsanne corner gravel trap.
95 Aston Martin spun across a gravel trap and sustained heavy rear-end damage in an impact against the barrier at Indianapolis turn.
[69] Orudzhev's third-placed SMP BR1 lost control on the exit to the Porsche Curves and crashed rearward into an outside tyre barrier at high speed.
3 Rebellion car incurred a three-minute stop-and-go penalty for a procedural error on the team's usage of tyre compounds, promoting Vandoorne's No.
[82] De Vries' Racing Team Nederland Dallara car had a straightline crash against a barrier on the entry to Indianapolis corner due to a possible broken right-front suspension arm.
[99] His co-driver, Oliver Gavin, said that Hoshino put Fässler in a position to hit the barrier by unexpectedly changing his direction after allowing faster cars to pass him and called for such manoeuvres to be reviewed.
