Jarvis: Le Mans issues "not a good advert" for LMP1 cars

All five factory-entered LMP1 machines suffered mechanical dramas during the last weekend's Le Mans race, with two of the three Toyotas retiring by the midway point.

Porsche salvaged a win by a single lap late on with its sole surviving #2 919 Hybrid, having lost the sister entry to an oil pressure problem with a little under four hours left when it was 13 laps ahead.

Jarvis, who spent five years on Audi's LMP1 programme up until its withdrawal last year left him without a seat for this term, was ironically one of the chief beneficiaries of the poor LMP1 reliability.

The British driver and his teammates Ho-Pin Tung and Thomas Laurent led Le Mans outright in their #38 Jackie Chan DC Racing Oreca, before slipping back to second with just over an hour to go.

Jarvis told Motorsport.com that he foresaw the troubles for the hybrid cars to an extent, and has questioned how hard both Toyota and Porsche were pushing.

"I had a bet with my engineers that an LMP2 would finish on the podium, but we definitely didn't see ourselves leading the race," Jarvis said.

"After the test day it was clear the P1 hybrids would have issues at some point, but what we saw last weekend was manufacturers pushing the envelope to the extreme, and it wasn't a good advert [for the class] in the end.

"The ACO sets the rules to slow the cars down, yet this year we had the lap record smashed and the cars going faster than ever on less fuel than ever. But that's clearly had a knock-on effect on reliability.

"Perhaps the cars now are just too technical, and in my opinion something has to be done about the cost surrounding them if the class is going to be sustainable."