TF Sport and Corvette Racing reigned at Le Mans on Sunday as the team’s No. 33 Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R of Nicky Catsburg, Jonny Edgar and Ben Keating earned a hard-fought LMGT3 victory in the 24 Hours of Le Mans. It was the first victory at the French endurance class for the Corvette GT3 and 10th for the Corvette Racing program since its first Le Mans win in 2001. Courtesy photo

By John Sturbin, Raceday San Antonio

Native Texan Ben Keating added to Corvette Racing’s 24 Hours of Le Mans legacy as one of three co-drivers who wheeled TF Sport’s No. 33 Chevrolet Corvette Z06 GT3.R to victory in the LMGT3 class.

Recovering from surgery on a shattered right elbow, Keating shared the Competition Yellow No. 33 Corvette with Nicky Catsburg of Belgium and Jonny Edgar of Great Britain during the 94^th edition of the twice-around-the-clock classic in Le Mans, France.

“You always believe it can happen, absolutely,” said Keating, a 54-year-old racer/businessman from Victoria, Texas. “I don’t care how good your car or team is. You can’t come into a 24-hour race expecting to do well. You just have to do your job, and we had a perfect race…no penalties, no mistakes. The car is in pretty good shape, and that’s what you need to do to win this race.”

Keating and his cohorts scored the first victory for the mid-engine Corvette GT3 and 10th for the Corvette Racing program since its first Le Mans win in 2001. Corvette won Le Mans for the first time since 2023, when Catsburg and Keating prevailed in the final year of the GTE Am class with a C8.R.

“What an historic day for General Motors and Corvette Racing at the 24 Hours of Le Mans,” said Mark Reuss, president, General Motors. “To earn Corvette Racing’s 10th class victory at Le Mans is a tremendous achievement for our motorsports, design and engineering teams.

“Huge congratulations to drivers Nicky Catsburg, Jonny Edgar and Ben Keating and our partners TF Sport. You have earned your place in the history books. It’s an incredibly proud moment for all of us and it shows that, working as one team, GM can beat the best in the world.”

Overall victory in the premier Hypercar class went to Toyota after a three-way battle against BMW and Cadillac Racing. The No. 7 TR010 HYBRID of Kamui Kobayashi of Japan, Mike Conway of Great Britain and Nyck de Vries of Holland scored Toyota’s sixth win at Le Mans, the first for its Hypercar badged as a TR010 and its first win since 2022.

Meanwhile, after having led large portions of the race, the No. 12 Cadillac Hertz Team JOTA V-Series.R finished fourth. Frenchman Norman Nato, Will Stevens of Great Britain and Louis Deletraz of Switzerland missed a podium finish by 11.964-seconds. The team also finished 32.381-seconds behind the winning Toyota.

Corvette customer TF Sport _ headquartered in Slinfold, West Sussex, England, United Kingdom _ celebrated the LMGT3 victory in its 10th appearance at Le Mans, where the team won for the fourth time.

Starting 17th in LMGT3, the No. 33 Corvette team established itself as a contender early. After an ironman run in the race’s opening eight hours by Keating _ who completed his minimum of six hours driving with five stints and then four stints _ Edgar and Catsburg surged to the front of LMGT3 by the time the sun rose over the 8.467-mile Circuit de la Sarthe.

Edgar moved the No. 33 Corvette into the class lead for the first time in the race’s 10th hour during his second stint. Catsburg also led into the final third of the race by as much as three minutes before a safety car chopped that advantage to a few seconds.

Edgar emerged as Corvette’s designated closer, logging five consecutive stints and just under four hours to take the checkered flag for his first Le Mans victory. Catsburg earned his second Le Mans win and Keating posted his third.

Goodyear Racing claimed the No. 33 Corvette prevailed in “the most relentless Le Mans of the LMGT3 era,” as the fastest 100-lap average pace recorded by an LMGT3 car was 1.2-seconds per lap quicker than last year’s race.

Keating raised the bar on his personal pain threshold, competing at Le Mans nine weeks removed from an operation on a right elbow injured in a mountain bike training accident in April. Recovery from surgery prevented Keating from competing in the opening two rounds of the World Endurance Championship at Imola, Italy, and Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium. Keating progressed from a full cast to a brace before finally being cleared to return to the cockpit last week. 

“I had full surgery nine weeks ago,” Keating noted during a pre-race interview with motorsport.com. “The doctor said, ‘There’s no way you’ll be ready.’ And on Monday, he said, ‘Ahh, you’re not going to hurt it. You can race…(but) it’s not going to feel very good.’ That’s a pretty good description. It doesn’t feel very comfortable.”

Keating, who carries a Bronze-rating from the FIA, reiterated he was determined to not be the weak link in the No. 33 Corvette’s lineup.

“It’s so good to be with these guys,” Keating said after the No. 33 Corvette was the only LMGT3 entry to complete 336 laps/2,844.912 miles. “I enjoy Nicky. I’m super-proud of Jonny. This has to be the best weather I’ve ever seen in Le Mans in the 12 times I’ve done it. It was a clean race. I’d be shocked if we didn’t go further than we ever have before. It made for really competitive racing. The heat was good for our car, so it was an advantage to have that heat, especially in the middle of the day when we got strong.”

As noted, Keating notched his third victory in the world’s greatest endurance race. “To win with Corvette is really special again,” said Keating, a third-generation entrepreneur operating Keating Auto Group in Victoria, Texas. “It’s even better to have my name on the side of it. In 2023 when we won with the Corvette, I didn’t have Keating Chevrolet. Now I have Keating Chevrolet so I can put my dealership on it. Hopefully we win on Sunday and sell Corvettes on Monday.”

Andrea Hidalgo, Corvette Racing program manager, congratulated the class-winning threesome on “a nearly flawless race” in the No. 33 Z06 GT3.R. “It’s amazing to be able to help bring home such an important win for the Corvette Racing program and add to the long legacy Corvette has at Le Mans,” Hidalgo said. “This shows the strength of our Corvette GT3 platform and the strength of our Corvette customer teams to execute and win. Congratulations to TF Sport, Nicky, Jonny and Ben.”

TF Sport also celebrated the victory as part of its 10th appearance at Le Mans, where the team won for the fourth time. In addition, the No. 34 Racing Team Turkey by TF Corvette of Charlie Eastwood, Salih Yoluc and Peter Dempsey finished sixth in LMGT3 after starting last on the 25-car grid. Courtesy photo

In addition, the No. 34 Racing Team Turkey by TF Corvette of Charlie Eastwood and Peter Dempsey, both of Ireland, and Salih Yoluc of Turkey finished sixth in LMGT3 after starting last on the 25-car grid. A third TF Sport Corvette _ the No. 2 Johor Motorsports Racing entry for Ben Green of the United Kingdom, Lorcan Hanafin of Great Britain and Prince Jefri Ibrahim of Malaysia _ placed 14th in the first Le Mans for the JMR crew.

The No. 34 Corvette ran out front in the 11th hour as Eastwood completed a remarkable comeback by the team after starting last. The No. 13 Autosport Corvette retired in the fifth hour after an on-track collision damaged the car beyond repair.

Catsburg said working with his “good teammates” made the 24-hour grind relatively easier. “If you get to write the story, you would write it this way,” said Catsburg, a 38-year-old native of The Netherlands. “We had to wait for Ben to heal and be back in shape. Nine weeks after he broke his elbow, so it’s an incredible result for us. A great, great day.

“First of all, the Corvette has been great to us first in 2023 and now today. For Ben to do all of his driving before Sunday with no mistakes, that was incredible. Then Jonny Edgar _ the man with two first names _ if you asked me, he was man of the match. He had just crazy pace and did five stints until the end. A big thank you to him as well.

“What Jonny showed was incredible. I feel like this is one of those races that could be a career-changing race. He was unbeatable today and he showed that it’s very nice to have teammates like that. It’s very cool for him. This also means we are doing well in the championship going to Sāo Paulo. You couldn’t ask for a better day than this.”

Edgar said he went into the weekend believing the No. 33 Corvette had a legitimate chance at class victory. “But in a 24-hour race you need so much to go right,” Edgar said. “You need some luck with safety cars or to also not be unlucky. There are a hundred things that could have gone wrong but we had a pretty perfect race, I would say. No mistakes, no contact, good pit stops the whole time. It was just a great race.

“The plan wasn’t to do five stints at the end. But I think I had to do at least three due to the drivetime rules and how much Nicky had done. I was going to do three but because of the way we did tires, it made sense to do four. Once I was already in for four, I may as well have stayed in again. So it went from two stints to five pretty quickly. But I felt good in the car and it was easy to drive, which changes a lot about how much effort is needed to drive. That made it easier over the 24 hours.”

Tom Ferrier, TF Sport team-owner, said the result stands as a benchmark for his organization. “Everything fell in our favor and worked the way we planned it, which doesn’t happen very often,” Ferrier said. “We got breaks when we needed to. The car was fast. These guys were awesome. We didn’t get any track limits penalties, didn’t damage anything. It was really well-executed, and against a grid like that you had to do that to win it. At one point it looked like it was going to be really easy but obviously the safety car brought an end to that. I’m just so proud of everybody who’s part of this team.”

In addition to the on-track performances of the three drivers, Ferrier pointed to the work by TF Sport’s garage crew. “The race had 36 pit stops because the stints are so short,” Ferrier said. “I don’t remember it being like that last year; it felt like hard work because you never had time to sit and reset and think because you’re up and down.”

The Hypercar class/overall race-winning Toyota completed 381 laps/3,225.927 miles en route to halting Scuderia Ferrari’s Le Mans winning streak at three. In what amounted to a 24-hour sprint race, the trio of 499Ps failed to secure a podium spot.

Two safety car periods and a smattering of full-course yellows and slow zones disrupted the action; last year’s race saw only one safety car intervention. But that didn’t prevent a close finish, as the winning margin for the No. 7 crew was just 10.9-seconds and the top seven cars all finished on the lead lap.

“We have waited so long for this victory,” said Japanese ace Kamui Kobayashi, lead driver/team principal of the No. 7 Toyota. “We have a lot of seconds in Le Mans, now we have two wins. We had a very challenging week; we had a driveshaft sensor issue and a puncture…it was tough. We made it in the end, and everyone did a great job.”

BMW Team WRT’s Spa-winning No. 20 M Hybrid of Sheldon van der Linde of South Africa, Rene Rast of Germany and Robin Frijns of Holland, who brought the car home, finished second. The No. 20 Bimmer narrowly missing out on becoming the first LMDh-spec Hypercar to win the event. The Bavarian marque recorded its first overall podium in the event since 1999, when it won with the V12 LMR.

“We have mixed emotions,” Rast said. “On one hand, it’s a huge success for the project because previously we hadn’t finished without a technical issue; now we came close to winning the race. But on the other you want to win, and we came close and you don’t know if you will get the chance again.”

Completing the podium was the No. 8 Toyota of New Zealander Brendon Hartley, Sebastien Buemi of Switzerland and Ryo Hirakawa of Japan. It was a strong run for the trio, despite losing time at two pit stops in the closing stages to change a brake drum mounting on a bone-dry track where temperature and tire selection played a key role in the outcome.

“It was looking so good for car No. 8 for a long time, and Cadillac and BMW had their moments,” Toyota’s Conway said. “It was super-tough, and until the last three hours we didn’t know what would happen. I think Nyck was hiding from everyone in his room for much of the final hour and I was pacing. But we got through it and did the job.”

Cadillac’s No. 12 from Hertz Team JOTA _ featuring an updated aero package _ finished 11-plus seconds off the podium in fourth and 32 seconds off the lead. The No. 12 crew also dealt with an ill-timed full-course yellow, which forced them to pit for an emergency service stop in the 20th hour.

“It’s pretty disappointing to come away with fourth place,” Will Stevens said. “I think, honestly, we deserved more than that. With the pace we showed we should have been on the podium at least. But we were more in the mix than last year, which is a positive. Coming here we had higher hopes than the result we ended up with, so we can’t help but be disappointed. But we’ll come back again next year stronger.”

Norman Nato added the team made “big improvements” to the car as compared to last year. “We have the top speed we were missing before, and overall, the package is a step forward,” the Frenchman said. “I really enjoyed these 24 Hours. We’ve had some great battles out there with the BMW, the sister car and the Toyota, and that’s what we like. For the team and for the fans, it’s amazing to be in this position with a chance to fight for the win.”

Louis Deletraz said the No. 12 team basically maxed-out its performance. “Obviously, it’s a great result but after leading so much of the race and being up front the whole week, it’s still disappointing for sure,” Deletraz said. “I think we did the maximum we could, the circumstances made it that way. We came here to fight for a win, we never gave up and we’ll be back for more because we are hungry to win this race.”

The No. 101 Dex Wayne Taylor Racing Cadillac V-Series.R driven by brothers Ricky and Jordan Taylor of Central Florida and Filipe Albuquerque of Portugal finished ninth overall.

“This year at Le Mans, we were competitive throughout the weekend,” team-owner Wayne Taylor said. “I want to thank Cadillac and General Motors for all the effort and assistance and passion they put into this. They are real partners. The team was awesome, and we had no mechanical failures of the car during the entire week of practice and then qualifying and everything. Though we had issues during the race, the whole Cadillac team worked well with all three cars.

“Thanks to Dex, our commercial partner, and the drivers and everybody on the team. It felt like a podium finish, because this team has only been here twice and got everything right, made no mistakes.”

Cadillac Racing lost JOTA’s sister car, the No. 38 V-Series.R featuring Le Mans native Sebastien Bourdais, to a power steering problem while fighting for the lead at the halfway mark.

“I think overall we were pretty happy with our performance,” said Jeromy Moore, chief engineer, Cadillac Racing. “We brought a competitive car to the battle and certainly had a chance to win it. But as always you don’t get selected to win Le Mans, Le Mans selects you. The guys performed well in the cars, the crew and the staff, they did an amazing job.

“The competition was strong, as always. I’m just happy that we could put up a fight for so long, almost down to the wire. So pretty happy, exhausted as always, but we’ll look forward to coming back even stronger next year.”

The reigning Hypercar world champions in the No. 51 Ferrari AF Corse 499P completed the top-five, crossing the line just under two minutes off the lead.

Inter Europol Competition captured a third LMP2 win in four years with a 1-2 finish headed by its No. 43 crew of Frenchman Tom Dillmann, Jakub “Kuba” Smiechowski of Poland and Nick Yelloly of Great Britain, who won last year’s race and went back-to-back. The No. 43 team completed 361 laps/3,056.587 miles _ the only class entry to cover that distance.

Next WEC race is in Sao Paulo, Brazil, on July 12 at Autódromo José Carlos Pace with the Rolex Six Hours of São Paulo.

Next IMSA GTP event is the Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen at Watkins Glen (N.Y.) International on June 25. The race will start at 12:10 pm (EDT) and will be streamed on Peacock and on IMSA’s YouTube page (outside the United States). IMSA Radio will stream live audio coverage on XM 206, Channel 996 on the SiriusXM app and IMSA.com.