Tokyo -The Yokohama Rubber Co., Ltd., has announced that a car using Yokohama's racing tires had won the GT Class of the 69th 24 Hours of Le Mans race for the second year running. The race was held for two days from June 16 on the Sarthe Circuit in Le Mans, France. Other three cars also supported by the company all completed the grueling endurance race, with one of them having followed the winning car in the second place.

The cars participating in the 69th 24 Hours of Le Mans race are categorized into the Proto class and Grand Touring (GT) class. Proto class cars are designed specially for the race, while GT class cars are the same models as those sold in the market. A total of four Yokohama-tire mounted cars participated in the race of this year, and one of them, the Porsche 911GT3R, won in the GT class. The car was numbered 83 and driven by G. Rosa, F. Babini and L. Drudi from Seikel Motorsport of Germany. It was the second consecutive winning for a Yokohama tire-mounted car from the last year when a Porsche from the Team Taisan Advan won in the same class.

Another Yokohama tire-mounted car followed the winning team in the second place in the GT class. The car is the Porsche 911GT3R numbered 77 and driven by a trio of G. Jeannette, R. Dumas and Ph. Haezebrouck from Freisinger Motorsport. Also, other two cars using Yokohama tires completed the tough race with rapidly changing circuit conditions due to unstable weather, while 27 cars out of a total of 48 entries withdrew from the race.

Yokohama supplied the four cars with a total of approximately 900 tires: the models YOKOHAMA A005 for dry circuit use and YOKOHAMA A006 for wet circuit use. Their tire sizes were 250/650R18 for the front and 280/680R18 for the rear.

Yokohama Tire-Mounted Car Ranking in the 69th 24 Hours of Le Mans race