The 2025 Le Mans 24 Hours won't go down in history as one of the great editions of this race, as hopes of multi-manufacturer fight for honours failed to materialised.
But there were still two major stories to tell at the front of the field: one of jubilation for one of the winners, and one of disappointment for the runner-up crew that stopped the whole thing from being a walkover.
Here's our verdict on what played out at Le Mans:
Even we didn't expect this dominance
Thibaut Villemant
Ferrari was keen to play down its chances all week - so much so that on Friday it explained to me for an hour that I didn't understand anything about racing because I'd written that its cars were dominating.
Come the race itself, it's clear to see that its cars dominated.
And even if its rivals were hamstrung - Porsche was good in hot conditions; Alpine and BMW were big disappointments; Toyota never stood a chance - and even if Robert Kubica was magical, you can't see that kind of domination in a Balance of Performance championship.
Ferrari was on its own for a long time. And that's not what I expected. Even then, it's a good thing there was a safety car - because without that it would have been a lot worse.
The heroes who changed the picture
Val Khorounzhiy
As a first-time Le Mans 24 Hours attendee, I was ready for the race to wrap up around the 19-/20-hour mark already - not because I was particularly tired, but because it felt like I'd seen what the 2025 version had to offer and that the last four hours wouldn't much change that.
Rookie mistake.
After all the hullabaloo about four-five-six different manufacturers in the mix for the win, there was something grating about the prospect of a controlled Ferrari 1-2-3.
As a result in a vacuum it's completely unobjectionable and, viewed through a certain lens, very very cool. But, to quote some of Ferrari's drivers pre-race:
"For sure looks like we are not the strongest in terms of pace this year."
"We knew already before coming here that they [Cadillac] were the car to beat, to be honest."
"There are much more than one or two competitors that can fight for victory."
Were they lying? Maybe not. But certainly a lot of people wisely expected a show of dominance from Ferrari, and for much of the race - perhaps thanks to the cooler conditions - they got exactly that.
Then the two, or maybe six, heroes of the story changed the picture.
Hero number one was the #83 crew - which, admittedly, was always a win contender but for a long time felt like it was going to be just simply outlasted by the two main cars. It's cool that they won. It's cool that Kubica won.
But hero number two was the Penske Porsche #6 crew that broke the Ferrari dominance in second. I went to the post-race press conference, and all three drivers looked broken - maybe by the exertion, but clearly by the result, too.
There was an apparent subtext in the words coming out of Kevin Estre, and Matt Campbell, and Laurens Vanthoor: that they could scarcely believe how well their side of the garage executed the race, and could believe even less that it wasn't enough to win.
Emotionally, it would've surely been easier to just finish a distant fourth - best of the rest, nothing more you could've done, onwards and upwards. But the #6 crew kept throwing everything at the wall - and things just kept sticking. Give the race another hour, and it's hard not to feel they would've Frankensteined a win out of this.
A year on, I won't remember the marginal tedium of the 'middle' hours - but I'll remember the #83 and the #6.
This is Kubica's win
Edd Straw
Le Mans is a team effort, but following from afar in Montreal it's impossible for me not to see this as Kubica's win. He'll play it down, but given what he has been through since his horrific rallying accident and the limitations he has as a result in his right arm and hand - he once told me he had to learn to drive "70% left-handed" for his F1 comeback - it's a sensational story.
Kubica is driven, determined, all about racing and pushes his teams hard. He had a remarkable F1 career taken away from him in 2011, with a Ferrari move and surely many wins in his future, and for him even to come back into competing in motorsport was an amazing achievement. Knowing his character, he will have endured dark days during his long recovery and through multiple operations and not to have lost that competitive drive is testament to his strength of character.
Back in 2014, I headed down to Tuscany the day after the Monaco Grand Prix for a cover story for Autosport magazine. Then, he was competing in rallying but had yet to return to a circuit racing event since his crash. What he told me always stayed with me because it reflected how haunted he felt by what he had lost. It carried with it a hint of the mental anguish he must have endured, heightened when he tried to return to the track as a guest.
"Last year [2013] I was competing in a German rally so I tested the week before," said Kubica. "There was a DTM race at Nurburgring. I had a plan to go and see the race. I called Toto [Wolff, Mercedes motorsport boss] to ask if I could come and he said, ‘No problem’. On Sunday morning I left Trier and I started feeling, ‘I should go… I should not go’. So I went to Nurburgring, but half an hour before, when I started driving around the area and memories came back, I texted Toto and asked to meet at his hotel. But that was next to the circuit and when I got there Auto GP was on track. When I heard the sound [of the cars] I met Toto in the hotel for breakfast and then I went back to Trier. I suddenly got a feeling that I didn’t like."
Kubica did eventually go back to the circuits and started winning - becoming a champion in the European Le Mans Series and winning at world championship level in the World Endurance Championship. He even, improbably, returned to F1, something that once seemed an impossibility.
It probably was impossible, just as coming back to winning one of the most competitive Le Mans 24 Hours was. But that's Kubica the great racing driver, he does the impossible - it's just that what happened on Sunday February 6 2011 changed how that manifested itself and his life forever.
He'll downplay his journey, that's just the kind of character he is, but what he has achieved in his circumstances is one of the most remarkable stories in motorsport history.
One drive changed perceptions of this race
Sam Smith
The 2025 Le Mans 24 Hours was far from a classic. But in my mind it kind of always will be for one particular driver's achievements, which at times bordered on the astonishing.
Kubica was the standout star of the race. He was not the only one, because his team-mates Phil Hanson and Yifei Ye are of course due credit, as are the second-placed #6 Porsche Penske trio of Vanthoor, Campbell and Estre, all of whom were excellent.
But Kubica's heroics sit on a pedestal all of their own. Completing 166 laps, 59 of them all at the end across five stints, and a good chunk without a functioning drinks bottle, makes his performance cross the border from professional to legendary.
Kubica did 43% of the race in the winning car and was utterly immense through most of it. Unlike in 2024 he didn't put a foot wrong and after his last-lap LMP2 heartbreak in 2021, and finishing on the runner-up step twice in 2022 and 2023, it felt like destiny of sorts.
The overarching remembered theme though will be the satellite-operated AF Corse 499P beating the factory Ferraris. There were many reasons for it becoming the first customer(ish) entry to win outright since 2005 when Champion Racing won in a private Audi R8 - although one could count the 2010 Audi Sport North America entry, if you are really being picky.
Ferrari has clearly made big steps with its 499P package, yet it could've been closer potentially had the #6 Porsche Penske not been sent to the back of the Hypercar grid ahead of the race for being underweight in qualifying.
But for me the abiding memory will be Kubica's simply awesome commitment, tyre management and execution of his ludicrously captivating final five stints at the wheel from Sunday lunchtime on a sunny June afternoon. In years to come, I'm sure that will have earned a kind of La Sarthe immortality that's reserved for the true endurance racing greats.
