Toyota and Alonso conquer Le Mans 24 Hours

Fernando Alonso has won the Le Mans 24 Hours in his first attempt, giving Toyota its first Le Mans victory after 19 attempts.

Toyota had never won Le Mans despite nearly two decades of racing at the famous French endurance race.

Winning at Le Mans with teammates Sebastien Buemi and Kazuki Nakajima, McLaren F1 driver and two-times Monaco GP winner Alonso now only has to take victory at the famous Indy 500 to bag motorsport's most coveted 'triple crown' – matching the only man to win all three races, Englishman Graham Hill.

Toyota's win will be bitter-sweet for the Japanese car-maker as this year it raced effectively without competition after Porsche and Audi pulled out of the top-flight sports car racing, leaving the TS050 race car as the only hybrid racer in the top LMP1 class.

Other LMP1 cars were racing but they were significantly slower non-hybrids run by less well-financed privateer teams.

That said, Toyota's win was far from assured since reliability or tangles with slower cars over 24 hours has ruined the attempts of many works entries over the years.

To help improve the odds of a win this year, Toyota favoured a two-car attack at Le Mans with a second race car driven by Briton Mike Conway, Japanese Kamui Kobayshi and Argentine Jose Maria Lopez. It was a nail-biting race for much of the first half as the two works cars battled it out, frequently swapping the lead.

It was Alonso who was attributed with dragging car #8 to the win after a penalty saw his car fall two minutes behind the other Toyota.

Thanks to a series of blistering night-time stints the Spaniard narrowed the lead before his teammate Nakajima reclaimed the lead for the final time.

In the end Toyota took a one-two win.

Alonso, 36, sought permission last year from his McLaren F1 team to compete in both the Indy 500 and World Endurance Championship after it became clear the British team would not be able to challenge the F1 front-runners for a win.