Sebastien Buemi’s latest appearance in this list isn’t just down to his heroics in the last knockings of a WEC campaign that secured Toyota the manufacturers’ crown.
PLUS: How never-say-die Toyota salvaged WEC manufacturers' glory in Bahrain
The chance of a repeat of the 2022 and 2023 drivers’ titles for the Swiss and his team-mates disappeared early in the season, but then Buemi performed at least as well as in those two years.
His drive at Le Mans was superlative and deserved to be rewarded with a fifth victory at the French enduro. He’s been higher in the Top 50, but that harks back to the days when he was also a genuine frontrunner in Formula E.
Buemi's year in his own words
“Now in the Hypercar category it’s sometimes a bit difficult to shine because the cars are so close and the way the performance is balanced, you have to be lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time because overtaking is so difficult.
“You can get blocked behind someone and can’t show your pace. But I always believe that over the year you’ll get a couple of opportunities to really show what you can do. I was lucky enough to get that chance at Le Mans and then in Bahrain.
“In Bahrain things weren’t going our way after the early incident and it looked like our hopes as a team were all on the #7 car. We’d had a couple of slow stints and were a bit unlucky on strategy. But I was thinking that our tactics could come good because I suspected we might have a big tyre advantage over the drivers around me at the end.
“It worked out that way with the safety cars and I got in the car and went for it with maximum risk. It was case of winning the championship for Toyota or crashing. This time I was in the right place at the right time. It was an opportunity to show what me and the car were really capable of.
“It would have been hard for Toyota to walk away from the season with nothing after having the fastest car over the course of the year. I climbed in the car knowing that everything rested on my shoulders because #7 was out of the race. It was all down to me, but I was able to pass a lot of cars and make it happen.
“Sometimes the stars do align.”
