Global Information2022 24 Hours of Le Mans information
Index: Races | Winners | |||
The 90th 24 Hours of Le Mans (French: 90e 24 Heures du Mans) was a 24-hour automobile endurance event that was held in front of 244,200 spectators on 11 and 12 June 2022 at the Circuit de la Sarthe, near Le Mans, France for Le Mans Hypercar (Hypercar), Le Mans Prototypes (LMP) and Le Mans Grand Touring Endurance (LMGTE) cars that were entered by teams of three drivers each. It was the 90th edition of the event organised by the Automobile Club de l'Ouest, and the third round of the 2022 FIA World Endurance Championship. A test day was held the week before the race on 5 June.
A Toyota GR010 Hybrid shared by Sébastien Buemi, Brendon Hartley and Ryō Hirakawa started from pole position after Hartley recorded the fastest overall lap time in the Hyperpole session. The three drivers led for 274 of the race's 380 laps and finished first, two minutes and 1.222 seconds ahead of teammates Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi and José María López (who shared another Toyota GR010 Hybrid). It was Buemi's fourth Le Mans victory, Hartley's third, Hirakawa's first and Toyota's fifth in succession. A Glickenhaus SCG 007 LMH shared by Ryan Briscoe, Franck Mailleux and Richard Westbrook completed the podium, five laps behind in third place.
Jota's team of Roberto González, António Félix da Costa and Will Stevens, sharing an Oreca 07-Gibson car, won the Le Mans Prototype 2 (LMP2) category after leading for all but 15 laps. The debuting Prema squad of Lorenzo Colombo, Louis Delétraz and Robert Kubica followed, two minutes and 21 seconds later, and the class podium was completed by the sister Jota trio of Jonathan Aberdein, Ed Jones and Oliver Rasmussen in third place. In the final Le Mans Grand Touring Endurance Pro (LMGTE Pro) race at Le Mans, the No. 91 Porsche 911 RSR-19 of Gianmaria Bruni, Richard Lietz and Frédéric Makowiecki won the category; AF Corse's No. 51 Ferrari 488 GTE Evo, shared by James Calado, Alessandro Pier Guidi and Daniel Serra, was second. Aston Martin won the Le Mans Grand Touring Endurance Am (LMGTE AM) class with an TF Sport-run Aston Martin Vantage GTE, shared by Henrique Chaves, Ben Keating and Marco Sørensen, 44.446 seconds ahead of WeatherTech Racing's Porsche 911 RSR-19 driven by Julien Andlauer, Cooper MacNeil and Thomas Merrill.
The Alpine trio of André Negrão, Nicolas Lapierre and Matthieu Vaxivière remained atop the Hypercar Drivers' Championship; their advantage was reduced to three points over Buemi, Hartley and Hirakawa, who passed Glickenhaus' Romain Dumas and Olivier Pla for second. Bruni and Lietz took the GTE Drivers' Championship lead by three points over their Porsche teammates Michael Christensen and Kévin Estre. Toyota and Porsche left Le Mans as the respective Hypercar World Endurance and GTE Manufacturers' Championship leaders with three rounds remaining in the season.