Sebastien Buemi<\/a> in the final stint to claim second.<\/p>\nWhile Frijns said BMW can be proud of what it achieved on its third Le Mans appearance with its LMDh prototype, given the car\u2019s previous struggles, he was ultimately frustrated to miss out on victory.<\/p>\n
\u201cOf course, the disappointment is a bit higher than the happiness,\u201d he said.\u00a0\u201cIt’s been a long 24-hour race. A lot of ups and downs. We’ve been very strong at the beginning, with taking the start and taking the lead directly and slightly pulling away from the field, so we were very hopeful.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThen we had some\u2026 I wouldn’t say issues, but the pace dropped a bit. And in the night we came back and Toyota suddenly was there.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, I think generally it was a good race for the fans to watch. It was never really boring. But it’s a bit painful to finish P2 in a race where only P1 counts, even when you are 10 seconds behind the leader.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s the way it is. We need to come back next year. But I’m definitely proud of all the BMW people. They gave us a car to compete at the front end of the field, and I think we should be happy.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Winners](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/winners-7-toyota-racing-toyota.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Winners #7 Toyota Racing Toyota TR010 Hybrid: Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi, Nyck De Vries, second place #20 BMW M Team WRT BMW M Hybrid V8: Robin Frijns, Rene Rast, Sheldon Van Der Linde, third place #8 Toyota Racing Toyota TR010 Hybrid: Sebastien Buemi, Brendon Hartley, Ryo Hirakawa<\/p>\n
Photo by: Marc Fleury<\/p>\n
BMW entered the Hypercar class in 2024 after focusing its efforts entirely on IMSA\u2019s GTP class in its first season with the M Hybrid. However, the programme received limited success early on, and it wasn\u2019t until last month\u2019s Spa round that BMW scored its first top-class WEC win.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn one hand, it’s a huge success to our project because till today we had never finished in Le Mans without a technical issue.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“We came here with a clear goal. We wanted to finish in the top five. Now we even reached the podium. We were close to even winning the race, so it’s a huge success.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn the other side, if you can win Le Mans, you want to win Le Mans. We were close and that hurts because you never know when you get this chance in your life back again. You can see I’m not the youngest anymore.”<\/p>\n
Van der Linde echoed the comments of his team-mate saying, \u201cIt’s our first podium in Le Mans, so we can be very proud of that. But at the same time, losing out with 10 seconds, it hurts.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe just didn’t have enough in the tank in the last few stints unfortunately. But we are hungry to come back.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
BMW Motorsport boss Andreas Roos had \u201cno regrets\u201d about finishing second, but felt the deployment of the second safety car with six hours remaining compromised the chances of the #20 crew.<\/p>\n
\u201cDuring the two safety cars, we were quite unlucky,\u201d he explained. \u201cThe final safety car, which messed it up a bit for us because there we were a bit on the back foot.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cShortly before the safety car, we had quite an advantage in track position, but we had a small disadvantage in energy.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cBut the safety car basically took the track position advantage completely away to zero, and we only had the disadvantage in energy left.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd then we had to see that we come back into the same rhythm of the others in terms of energy. So then you start to do 13 lap stints again and so on.\u201d<\/p>\n
But asked whether BMW would have won without the safety cars, he replied: \u201cNo, I would not say so because that’s too much. I would have brought us into a different situation. But you can never say because of this, we would have won.\u201d<\/p>\n
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