Toyota arrived at Le Mans with Fernando Alonso, Sébastien Buemi and Kazuki Nakajima leading the LMP Drivers' Championship with 160 points, 31 ahead of teammates Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi and José María López. Mathematical permutations meant Conway's trio could still take the title if they won and Alonso's crew finished eighth or lower. Porsche's Michael Christensen and Kévin Estre led the GTE Drivers' Championship, which Toyota and Porsche had already secured in Teams' and Manufacturers' standings respectively.
The ACO introduced full-course yellow flags at Le Mans for the first time, replacing three-safety-car slow zones with a single 80 km/h mandate across the entire circuit.
Toyota took pole in all three qualifying sessions. Kobayashi set a 3:15.497 lap in the second session to secure the No. 7 Toyota on pole, with Nakajima's No. 8 car second. It was Toyota's third consecutive Le Mans pole.
The race started in dry and sunny conditions, waved off by Charlene, Princess of Monaco. Conway's No. 7 Toyota led from pole and set a track lap record of 3:17.297 on the fourth lap. Toyota quickly established pace over the non-hybrid LMP1 field, while in LMGTE Pro an early five-car battle among Corvette, Ferrari, Porsche, Ford and Aston Martin representatives played out through the opening stints.
The G-Drive Oreca briefly led LMP2 before a stop-and-go penalty for Vergne speeding under a full course yellow dropped it temporarily. Lapierre's Signatech Alpine took up the running and proved the class's most consistent threat throughout.
A light rain shower in the seventh hour caught Rebellion's Thomas Laurent, who spun the No. 3 car into a barrier on the Mulsanne Straight approach, prompting a safety-car period. Later, López used slower traffic to pass teammate Nakajima for the overall lead, only to run wide at Mulsanne and cede it back. A further safety car was needed when Orudzhev crashed the No. 17 SMP car rearward into a tyre barrier exiting the Porsche Curves at high speed; the accident was the seventh of eight safety car periods in total.
By the midpoint, the No. 7 Toyota led the No. 8 sister car by more than a minute. Porsche's No. 92 car led LMGTE Pro until a 20-minute garage stop for exhaust and brake repairs dropped Estre to ninth in class, handing the lead to AF Corse's Ferrari No. 51.
Almost 23 hours into the race, López's No. 7 Toyota — which had led for 191 consecutive laps — slowed on circuit. A wired tyre pressure sensor antenna fault incorrectly indicated a front-right puncture. Toyota brought the car in and changed only one tyre to minimise the stop. The sensors continued to report a puncture; a Michelin engineer checked the tyre and found no issue. Toyota made a second stop to change all four tyres. The car that was later found to have a fault on the left rear, not the right front.
Nakajima's No. 8 Toyota took the lead it held to the flag, completing 385 laps 16.972 seconds ahead of the No. 7 sister car. SMP Racing's No. 11, shared by Mikhail Aleshin, Vitaly Petrov and Stoffel Vandoorne, finished six laps behind in third as the highest-placed non-hybrid LMP1 entry.
In LMGTE Pro, AF Corse won on Ferrari's 70th anniversary of its first overall Le Mans victory: James Calado, Alessandro Pier Guidi and Daniel Serra took the class win 49 seconds ahead of Porsche's No. 91 entry. Porsche's Christensen and Estre finished tenth in class to secure the GTE World Drivers' Championship.
The Signatech Alpine team of Nicolas Lapierre, André Negrão and Pierre Thiriet won LMP2 unchallenged in the closing stages, earning Lapierre his fourth class win.
In LMGTE Am, the No. 85 Keating Motorsports Ford GT of Jeroen Bleekemolen, Felipe Fraga and Ben Keating crossed the finish line first after leading 273 consecutive laps. One day after the race, scrutineers discovered the car's fuel tank was 0.1 litres larger than the mandated 96-litre maximum; combined with an earlier 55.2-second time penalty for pit stops completed in under the 45-second minimum, the car was disqualified. Project 1 Racing's Porsche of Jörg Bergmeister, Patrick Lindsey and Egidio Perfetti inherited the class victory.
Alonso, Buemi and Nakajima won the LMP Drivers' Championship with 198 points, 41 ahead of their teammates. For Alonso it was his third motor racing world championship; for Nakajima it was the first FIA-sanctioned world title for a Japanese driver. Toyota secured its first WEC manufacturers' title.