Toyota suffered one of the most heartbreaking losses in 24 Hours of Le Mans history on Sunday, when, with three minutes to drive to an almost certain win, the No. 5 car of Kazuki Nakajima, Anthony Davidson and Sebastien Buemi failed, allowing the No. 2 Porsche to steal the most unlikely of victories.
The LMP1 class-winning Porsche piloted by Romain Dumas, Neel Jani and Marc Lieb completed 384 laps of the iconic 13.6-km circuit, ultimately finishing in front of the No. 6 Toyota TS050 of Kamui Kobayashi, Mike Conway and Stephane Sarrazin three laps behind in second.
With Nakajima at the wheel and a lead of more than a minute, the Toyota No. 5 lost power just three minutes short of the 24-hour mark, crawling to a stop in the finish straight, agonizingly close to the win. Nakajima did manage to get the car restarted and around the final lap, but it took almost 12 minutes, which was too slow for the car to be classified.