Despite having the largest presence in the Hypercar field at four cars, three works Porsche Penske Motorsport 963s and an additional customer car for Jota, Porsche's hopes of challenging for victory were wrecked by a series of accidents and reliability dramas.
Its best finisher was the #5 car of Dane Cameron, Frederic Makowiecki and Michael Christensen, which was on course to finish fifth until a late driveshaft issue in the final hour dropped it down to ninth, behind the leading Peugeot and both Glickenhaus entries.
The sister full-season World Endurance Championship car, the #6 machine in which Lotterer shared with Kevin Estre and Laurens Vanthoor, had already been delayed by a puncture when Estre suffered a crash at the Porsche Curves.
Further time was then lost replacing the battery of the hybrid system, an issue possibly connected to the shunt, that left the squad 22nd overall and 11th in the Hypercar class.
"Of course it's disappointing," Lotterer told Autosport. "When you are Porsche, you come here to win and it's only the win that matters. Simply, we were not strong enough.
"You always want to be the strongest to be in control and have a bit of a margin, but we didn't have that and we had too many reliability issues. We also had to drive on the limit just to have some pace."
The fight for the win turned out to be between Toyota and Ferrari, with the latter marque ultimately coming out on top to score its first outright Le Mans victory since 1965.
Source: Autosport