Kubica leads home Ferrari's third-straight Le Mans victory
Endurance

Kubica leads home Ferrari's third-straight Le Mans victory

by Valentin Khorounzhiy
4 min read

Former Formula 1 driver Robert Kubica and his AF Corse Ferrari team-mates Ye Yifei and Phil Hanson have won the 2025 Le Mans 24 Hours.

It marked a third consecutive Le Mans win for the Ferrari 499P, with a third different crew, as this time the factory Ferrari entries (also operated by AF Corse but overseen by the manufacturer) were forced to yield.

In fact, despite Ferrari having an extremely potent race that at one point looked like it might end with a 499P 1-2-3, in the end it was the yellow privateer AF Corse car that stood between Ferrari and a last-gasp defeat at the hands of Porsche.

One-time F1 grand prix winner Kubica and former Renault F1 junior Ye were already team-mates in 2021 at Le Mans when they had an LMP2 win snatched away from them at the last second.

They did score a WEC win together with Robert Shwartzman last year, and now have triumphed at Le Mans together with Hanson - their new team-mate for 2025 who had previously won Le Mans in the LMP2 class.

Though the three 499Ps underwhelmed in qualifying, it became clear soon enough in the 24-hour marathon that this was still the car to beat in most circumstances - and a mid-race safety car for a Cem Bolukbasi LMP2 crash allowed the Ferraris to make up for some early problems.

Team orders and trade-offs between the works Ferraris and the privateer AF Corse were also a consideration throughout, but the race seemed to swing decisively towards the #83 with four hours to go.

A full course yellow triggered by a crash for #78 Lexus LMGT3 driver Finn Gehrsitz closed the pitlane entry, as per the regulations, apart from emergency fuel stops - which the then-leading #51 Ferrari required.

And after that emergency stop it came in again, as required, only for veteran presence Alessandro Pier Guidi to suffer a costly spin on pitlane entry.

The #83 seemed to have a clear strategic edge over both the #50 and the #51 from that point on, but the works Ferraris underperforming also invited the #6 Porsche Penske into the fight for the podium.

While its fellow cars fell by the wayside through mishaps and penalties, the #6 - which had been disqualified from Wednesday qualifying - kept itself in the mix even as the Ferraris looked dominant, through going off-sequence on strategies, capitalising on slow zones, and extending stints, which seemed a consistent strength of the Porsche.

It came on strong at the end of the race, fighting off the #50 Ferrari after working its way past the #51 - increasingly ailing with technical issues - though the #83 proved out of reach.

Antonio Fuoco in the #50 was instructed to stay behind the #51 in the final minutes as Ferrari 'froze' the positions before a battle for third could really break out.

The pre-race hope of four, five or even six manufacturers in the fight for the overall win never materialised.

Cadillac's race pace was clearly a step down from its front-row lockout form, Toyota's leading contender was thwarted by a loose wheelnut, the BMWs struggled for pace and then reliability, and the Alpine was generally unremarkable - while both Peugeot and Aston Martin struggled to match their Hypercar rivals as expected.

Hypercar result

1 #83 AF Corse Ferrari (Ye/Hanson/Kubica)
2 #6 Porsche (Campbell/Vanthoor/Estre)
3 #51 Ferrari (Pier Guidi/Giovinazzi/Calado)
4 #50 Ferrari (Fuoco/Nielsen/Molina)
5 #12 Cadillac (Stevens/Nato/Lynn)
6 #7 Toyota (Conway/Kobayashi/De Vries)
7 #5 Porsche (Andlauer/Christensen/Jaminet)
8 #38 Cadillac (Bamber/Bourdais/Button)
9 #4 Porsche (Nasr/Tandy/Wehrlein)
10 #35 Alpine (Chatin/Habsburg/Milesi)
11 #36 Alpine (Schumacher/Gounon/Makowiecki)
12 #94 Peugeot (Duval/Vandoorne/Jakobsen)
13 #009 Aston Martin (Sorensen/Riberas/De Angelis)
14 #99 Proton Porsche (Varrone/Pino/Jani)
15 #007 Aston Martin (Gunn/Tincknell/Gamble)
16 #8 Toyota (Buemi/Hartley/Hirakawa)
17 #93 Peugeot (Jensen/Vergne/Di Resta)
18 #20 BMW (Rast/Frijns/van der Linde)
32 #15 BMW (Vanthoor/Marciello/Magnussen)
DNF #311 Cadillac (Vesti/Aitken/Drugovich)
DNF #101 Cadillac (Taylor/Taylor/Albuquerque)

LMP2 and LMGT3

There was a huge contrast between the victory battles in the two 'smaller' classes, LMP2 and LMGT3, as one of them culminated with final-hour dramatics and the other seemed settled in nighttime.

The #43 Inter Europol, which led for so much of the race but never in commanding fashion, looked to have lost the LMP2 win in heartbreaking fashion with a final-hour drivethrough penalty for pitlane speeding.

But Nick Yelloly, sharing the car with Tom Dillmann and Jakub Smiechowski, was able to reclaim the lead very soon after and very suddenly - as the leading #48 VDS Panis car, its main rival through the 23 hours, slowed dramatically in the last hour with an apparent issue.

Meanwhile, in LMGT3 the #92 Manthey Porsche more or less dominated after the nighttime exit of the #46 WRT BMW - which looked in with a strong chance to give Valentino Rossi his first Le Mans class win before parking up with electrical issues.

Its retirement released the #92 to take on the #21 AF Corse and win, with Porsche factory GT veteran Richard Lietz - sharing the car with Riccardo Pera and Ryan Hardwick - taking the chequered flag.

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Email
  • More Networks