24 Hours of Le Mans betting preview, news and tips

Eurosport 1, 2pm Saturday

Toyota have locked out the front row for the 2019 24 Hours of Le Mans but last year's winning crew of Fernando Alonso, Kazuki Nakajima and Sebastien Buemi are only second on the grid this time.

The number seven car, crewed by Kamui Kobayashi, Britain's Mike Conway and Jose Maria Lopez, is on pole after being the faster of the Japanese teams crews in all three qualifying sessions.

It wasn't without incident though, with Conway surviving an almighty collision with the leading LMP2 car driven by Roberto Gonzalez in Wednesday night's session.

That sort of thing can happen in endurance racing and Toyota had their share of bad luck in previous races - they were first and second on the grid in 2017 but could finish no higher than eighth after both cars had problems, while in 2016 Nakajima broke down when leading on the last lap.

Toyota could be aiming for a fourth win in a row but to make it just back-to-back wins they need to steer clear of trouble. The Kobayashi car is evens favourite but the Alonso crew are arguably the safer proposition over a marathon distance. They are available at 7-5 compared to evens for the favourites, making last year's winners the preferred bet.

Backing the best of the rest might not be the worst strategy, either and the Russian SMP Racing crews should be in the mix for the podium at least.

The number 11 car crewed by former McLaren F1 man Stoffel Vandoorne and Russians Mikhail Aleshin and Vitaly Petrov are interesting at 16-1 with bet365, with the sister crew of Sergey Sirotkin, a Williams driver last season, Egor Orudzhev and French veteran Stephane Sarrazin, are 12-1.

Leading grid positions: 1 No. 7 Toyota, 2 No. 8 Toyota, 3 No. 17 SMP Racing, 4 No. 3 Rebellion Racing, 5 No. 11 SMP Racing, 6 No. 1 Rebellion Racing.

Recommendations
Alonso/Buemi/Kobayashi (Toyota No 8)
2pts 7-5 bet365
Aleshin/Petrov/Vandoorne (SMP Racing No 11)
1pt 16-1 bet365

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