If life is a race, Le Mans is the race of your life

YiFei Ye

With another edition of the 24 Hours of Le Mans complete – and the WEC championship at its halfway point – it’s time to take stock.

In 2021, Team WRT entered an Oreca 07 Gibson in the 24 Hours of Le Mans. The car was driven by Polish driver Robert Kubica, Chinese driver Yifei Ye, and Swiss driver Louis Deletraz – but missed out ingloriously on victory in the final lap due to a throttle sensor failure.

In 2022 and 2023, Kubica finished second at Le Mans. In 2023 – during the Centenary edition – Yifei Ye switched to JOTA’s Porsche and had a spectacular race alongside António Félix da Costa and Will Stevens. After climbing from last to first and leading comfortably, Ye went wide at the Porsche Curves and damaged the car. Though it finished the race, the dream of winning Le Mans overall and in the premier class was once again deferred – until this year.

In the 2025 edition, the AF Corse Ferrari 499P – driven by Kubica, Yifei Ye, and Phil Hanson, the 2019–2020 FIA WEC LMP2 champion and winner of the 2020 24 Hours of Le Mans with the LMP2 Oreca – closed a cycle of three victories for the Italian brand’s three cars competing in the Hypercar class. Cars 50 and 51 have now been followed by 83, and it’s the color that distinguishes them: the first two wear the typical red of the Maranello house, while the third is yellow with a red bar on the body.

If for Kubica the victory is a just reward for a talented, gifted driver who has often seen his efforts and success hindered by bad luck – but who this time sees his resilience rewarded – for Hanson it is confirmation of a driver who still has a lot to give; while for Yifei Ye it is confirmation that the 2021 victory in the Asia Le Mans Series was no fluke and could be the harbinger of an auspicious career. Any one of them will be able to say to themselves today – as Dalmas, the Grand Marshal of the 2025 edition, did a few days ago – the phrase that makes the title of this chronicle. But this time, the new emperors of Le Mans arrived in yellow.

And the coincidence – in the case of Yifei Ye – will not go unnoticed. As well as being the first Chinese to win the mythical Le Mans race, he did so in a Ferrari painted in an imperial color.

In Chinese tradition, yellow represents power, wealth and the center. It is seen as the noblest and most precious color because it is also the color of gold and is associated with the Earth and the center of the universe. That’s why it was the color chosen by the famous Yellow Emperor – an ancestor of the Han people – and became the color of the Han Dynasty between 206 BC and 220 AD.

With his victory in the Hypercar class, Yifei Ye will quickly become a major symbol of Chinese sport – whose results in the most important categories of motorsport have been rather modest.

And his own life story will contribute to this – as it demonstrates that he is committed to learning, resilience and internationalization – from which many Chinese will learn.

While it’s fair to understand the sense of satisfaction and achievement that this victory in the 24 Hours of Le Mans will bring to all Chinese people, there’s something else that shouldn’t be forgotten – and that needs to be emphasized at this time. Yifei Ye left China at the age of 14 to pursue his dream.

He moved to Le Mans – where he did his karting apprenticeship, far from his family and his roots – learning English and French fluently. He still lives there after eleven years, having even bought a house near the Tertre Rouge bend, as he said at the press conference following the race. If today he is racing in the best and most famous Cavallino Rampante cars – in an Italian team, living in France and achieving success alongside a Polish and a British driver – this was only possible because China opened up to the world and he was humble enough to learn, make his way, exchange experiences and learn from foreigners who made him a better driver and a better man. That has allowed him today to lift the coveted 24 Hours of Le Mans Trophy.

Yifei Ye’s success is also the result of this attitude. And of his smiling amazement when he realized that the one interviewing him had left Macau to see him win at La Sarthe.

And this success is also a lesson for all those who make nationalism and serious patriotism the alpha and omega of success – forgetting that without freedom of movement, without intercultural dialogue free of barriers, without welcoming and being open to others, without respect for each other’s identity – we don’t evolve, we don’t learn, we don’t get the best out of each one of us, and we will never achieve success. This is also a lesson for Macau. Sérgio de Almeida Correia, Le Mans