Filipe Albuquerque: “I got a call from the Portuguese President congratulating me!”

The latest episode of WEC Talk is here and this week we explore the highs and the lows of one the most highly-anticipated events in the global motorsport calendar: the legendary 24 Hours of Le Mans. The 12th instalment of the official FIA World Endurance Championship podcast starts with a three-way interview with Le Mans’ LMGTE Pro category winners: Aston Martin Racing’s Alex Lynn, Harry Tincknell and Maxime Martin. We also hear from LMP2 category winner Filipe Albuquerque and finish with an interview from Toyota Gazoo Racing’s Technical Director, Pascal Vasselon. Highlighting the typical busy schedule of a racing driver, Tincknell spoke moments before he boarded a flight at Heathrow while Martin chatted with WEC Talk’s host Martin Haven direct from the Nurburgring. Lynn credited the reliability and performance of the Aston Martin Vantage AMR in helping the trio triumph at Le Mans.  The Briton took up the story: “One thing I really want to stress is that we had less power than what we were given pre-qualifying last year and so the improvement from the car in only 12 months is staggering. That is thanks to a lot of hard work and intelligence from the AMR and Prodrive team. It was an intense race, I can assure you and we drove it to the limit on every lap.”  Next, Haven spoke to United Autosports’ driver Filipe Albuquerque who entered the record books last weekend as the first Portuguese driver to win at Le Mans.  Albuquerque explained: “As a Portuguese driver, winning [Le Mans] is a huge thing. On Monday evening, I even got a call from the Portuguese President congratulating me! He congratulated me for the great success and for winning a trophy Portugal has never won before. It’s just huge for me and for the country... Actually, I can’t understand how Tom Kristensen won it nine times - it’s just so hard!”  In the third and final part of this week’s WEC Talk, Toyota’s Technical Director Pascal Vasselon chatted about the Japanese squad’s third consecutive win at Le Mans and gave an interesting insight into the team’s preparation ahead of next season including updates about the team’s brand-new Hypercar…

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24 Hours of Le Mans Virtual wins top industry award The inaugural 24 Hours of Le Mans Virtual – a joint collaboration between the Automobile Club de l'Ouest, the FIA World Endurance Championship and Motorsport Games – has won a prestigious Leaders Sports Award for Live Experience.  Launched back in 2008, Leaders run premium industry events and global summits, connecting senior industry leaders. The Leaders Sports Awards have been running for six years and showcase the most innovative companies and people driving the industry forward. The 2020 awards focused on organisations that are delivering value to the market by creating relevant and current content during COVID-19 and sought to recognise organisations “creating the best content to engage their audience". A panel of judges got together to discuss this year’s shortlist which including the 24 Hours of Le Mans Virtual which was run back in June and proved to be a resounding success. The Le Mans virtual race was announced as a winner earlier today in the Live Experience category. The 2020 24 Hours of Le Mans Virtual was the biggest motorsports esports event ever assembled bringing together 200 drivers from 37 different countries. It also attracted a cumulative audience of over 14.2 million across 57 different countries and was televised on the likes of Eurosport, ESPN and Sky Sports.

Watch the official #LeMans24 highlights video below

What the WEC drivers said post Le Mans  LMP1: Sébastien Buemi – No. 8 Toyota Gazoo Racing Toyota TS050 Hybrid  “I am feeling great after winning Le Mans for the third time. My team-mates have done an amazing job. We really tried to prepare ourselves well in the last three weeks, spending a lot of time in Cologne driving the simulator to try and find some small tricks as we’ve been here with this car for many years. To get better is never really easy, so we pushed hard and I’m very proud of them.  “Once again it shows that the luck can turn here in Le Mans because when we started the race, I had the feeling that everything was against us – slow zone, puncture, problem with the brakes. Then all of a sudden things started to go well and we found ourselves leading the race and winning by five laps. You never know until the race is over.”