Heartbreak, Sadness, and Sorrow - Toyota and Le Mans

(Image: Autosport / XPB Images)

19th June 2016, 19:50 Jakarta Time. I was listening to Radio Le Mans by my smartphone in my relative's house moments after break fasting (it is Ramadan month as I post this) since fifty minutes before, while browsing Twitter. Prior to Toyota's strong performance, I kept crossing my fingers to make sure that there indeed is a second Japanese manufacturer winning 24 Hours of Le Mans after Mazda in 1991 with its Mazda 787B.

Suddenly, a plot twist happened as John Hindhaugh's voice became even louder just three minutes before the race ended: The #5 Toyota TS050 Hybrid driven by Kazuki Nakajima halted to a stop right at the start/finish straight, allowing Porsche to pass through and claimed its second consecutive Le Mans victory. Nobody saw that coming, and it was enough to break everyone's heart who longed for a different winner, which also included the whole crew of Toyota Team Gazoo team. Of course, the drivers were astounded in heartbreak, Anthony Davidson could only said "Heartbreaking", and the climax of it all was that the radio communication where Kazuki Nakajima wanted to cry after the car finished, which took longer than six minutes and unfortunately kicking them out from the official classification.

2016 24 Hours of Le Mans - The Ballad of Ford GT

The Incredible Ford GT, in its LM GTE/GTLM form (Image: Road and Track)

The 2016 24 Hours of Le Mans marked a return for Ford with its new Ford GT car, competing in GTE Pro class of FIA World Endurance Championship and WeatherTech Sports Car Championship under the GTLM class as well. Throughout their venture in the two mentioned championships, Ford GT has experienced a lot prior to Le Mans, and this year they even tackled the big race by sending out FOUR, yes, FOUR cars in the GTE Pro category, all in the name of celebrating their 50 years of Ford in Le Mans.

For this year's recap, I decided to focus on one car which I already stated in the blog title, instead of the whole grid like last year. Consider that this is the "punishment" for having a tl;dr-ish recap of last year's race, but don't worry, I will also highlight the other categories from the likes of LMP1, LMP2 and GTE Am. LMP1 is of course a hot affair between the trinity of Audi, Porsche, and Toyota as they are now competitive against each other while Rebellion and ByKolles tried to take down the trinity, while LMP2 and GTE Am also delivered a good chunk of battles.

Good Things Always End with "Sport"

A photo posted by Rendy Andrian Y (@tsukasa_kadoya) on May 27, 2016 at 4:31pm PDT

Over the span of two weeks, lots were happened. Gran Turismo Sport, the newest entry to the Gran Turismo franchise, showed its colors with a couple of new stuffs, including the Tokyo Expressway (!), the all-new evolution of Photo Mode called Scapes, and the Livery Editor, as well as the fact that it is now a sanctioned by FIA which means that this game will be equal to any motorsporting event and, taking the e-Sport context into account, would be a good challenger to the DoTA 2 scene.

One week later meanwhile, I managed to try out GRID Autosport in Margo City. Intel Indonesia held an event entitled Intel Game Time which allowed visitors to shop for Intel's products as well as trying out their skills in three different games: GRID Autosport, FIFA Online and Point Blank. This golden opportunity is something that I can't be missed because of the fact that the words "GRID Autosport" and "Margo City" were indeed in the same sentence. It was a unique experience although I didn't expect anything from the leaderboard which would take the Top 3 from the daily leaderboard over the span of the show's run throughout Wednesday to Sunday in a final held in the Sunday afternoon, with the Top 3 in the final get to the Grand Final held in Mall Taman Anggrek.