Nyck de Vries feared Toyota was ‘out of contention’ before emotional Le Mans win

De Vries survives Le Mans uncertainty

Nyck de Vries admitted he feared the #7 Toyota was ‘out of contention’ for victory at the Le Mans 24 Hours on several occasions before converting a troubled race into an emotional first overall win.

For Toyota, the victory was far from straightforward. Both cars had started towards the rear of the Hypercar field, leaving the team with considerable ground to recover in one of endurance racing’s most demanding contests. Strategy and race pace gradually brought both entries into the fight, but the #7 crew had to overcome setbacks that repeatedly threatened to derail its bid.

Setbacks threatened Toyota’s charge

The first major issue was a puncture, an early blow that left the crew chasing lost momentum. More damaging still was a sensor fault that cost the car straight-line speed for much of the race, raising serious concerns inside the camp about whether the performance deficit would be too great to overcome.

De Vries did not hide how fragile the situation felt from inside the fight.

“Frankly speaking, I thought we were out of contention many times,” he explained. “I mean, we had an earlier puncture, we had a sensor issue that cost us a lot of straight-line speed, so we were afraid of not really having the speed and the pace.”

Yet the race swung back towards Toyota, underlining the uncompromising nature of Le Mans: no advantage is secure, and no setback is necessarily terminal until the flag falls.

“But it just shows that Le Mans never ends, until it’s over,” de Vries said.

A collective Toyota achievement

For de Vries, the win carried clear emotional weight, not only because it was his first overall triumph, but because of the collective effort behind it. He pointed to the strength of the working relationship within the #7 crew as central to the result.

“It is a collective achievement, and we’ve been working together for two-and-a-half years now, and the dynamics between us are great,” he said. “Everyone is complimentary to each other, so it’s just pure joy.”

In a race where Toyota had to recover from the back of the Hypercar field and absorb technical adversity, the #7 victory stood as a demonstration of composure under pressure. De Vries may have feared the win was gone more than once, but Le Mans still had one final answer to give.