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From YourSITE.com Motorsport News They say there are three great races in motorsport: the Grand Prix of Monaco, the Indianapolis 500 and the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Among them, only the latter can boast being the longest and most grueling – a knock-down, drag-out brawl between the world’s most storied marques. Audi Sport PR boss Jurgen Pippig described Le Mans as “the greatest weekend race of vehicles since Benhur”, and indeed it is.
Each June, like the iconic Rolex clockwork that marks the Circuit de La Sarthe, the greatest sports cars on the planet gather in France for this 24-hour enduro – a competition dominated by Audi in recent history. Not since its maiden voyage here ten years ago has the German marque faced such strong competition. In 1999 Ingolstadt showed up for its freshman year with a selection of cars – the open-top R8R fielded by Team Joest and the closed top R8C fielded by Audi Sport, UK. The Audis faced stiff factory backed competition from Mercedes-Benz, Toyota and BMW who’d eventually win that year’s race. From 1999 on, many of the big players left Audi to the sport, who then easily dominated from that point forward, only to lose one year to the Audi-powered Bentley Speed 8 that was also driven by a certain Tom Kristensen. Yes, there were difficult years for Audi, such as 2005 when the aging and restricted R8 brought Tom Kristensen his record-breaking seventh win in the very same year the all-conquering gasoline-powered Audi was set for retirement. Audi returned though with its diesel-powered R10, a car that had gone undefeated for two years before returning to Le Mans to face a faster battle-honed 908 HDi FAP from Peugeot with a squad of drivers featuring more F1 faces than a Schumacher retirement party. ***iamge3:center*** As Le Mans race week progressed, Peugeot began to flex its muscles. If Wednesday and Thursday’s qualifying sessions were any sort of indicator, Audi had plenty to be concerned about. Peugeot logged a blindingly fast 3:18 lap time Wednesday, though Audi publicly played it cool. Audi Sport reps repeated that they never shoot for pole in qualifying but rather use the time for adjusting the car’s setup. Audi driver Alan McNish joked that he’d lost ten Euros to one of his mechanics in a Peugeot lap time wager and this was the most concern shown by anyone from the Audi camp. Even in other ways, the Audi team remained cool. When fielding three-car teams, Audi has always run cars with red, black and yellow accents inspired by the German flag. However, a 2007 theory around the paddock was that, since yellow had never won at Le Mans, the drivers had lobbied for an all-silver car instead. Last year the yellow was gone, but two cars crashed out of the race. For ’08, yellow was not only back, it adorned the car of the pre-race favorite driver team of Capello, Kristensen and McNish. Another belief amongst drivers is that if you’re on the race poster, you don’t win the race. If Dindo Capello was concerned when his helmet appeared in the R10 on the ’08 race poster, the Italian wasn’t showing it.
At precisely 3PM, when the Audi R8 safety car peeled off into the pits, the hammer dropped and a field made up of more prototypes than GT cars rounded the Ford Chicane and howled down the front straight led by five whisper-quiet diesels – three Peugeots with two R10s hot on their rear splitters, followed by the Aston Lola, the third R10 and the rest of the field. Audi driver Alan McNish was particularly aggressive, pushing his #2 R10 right up on the three French diesels and even passing the #7 car driven by Nicolas Minassian on the second corner of the first lap. Out on the Mulsanne straight, Minassian took the third position back from McNish, but the Scotsman had made his point. On track television cameras, you could see Audi Sport boss Wolfgang Ullrich shooting a grin at Volkswagen Group boss Martin Winterkorn. Alan later told SPEED that he wanted to show Peugeot Audi was still in the race. Once passed, he set about keeping the R10 within range of the streaking black Peugeots until either traffic, weather or technical difficulties would close the gap. It was clear that raw speed wasn’t going to win Audi the race, with the three French cars lapping the 8.47 mile circuit three seconds faster than even the quickest Audi.
In the meantime, Frank Biela in the #1 Audi R10 passed the only car to split the pack of diesels on the front of the starting grid. He asserted his dominance over the Aston-Martin Lola and also began his attempt to keep pace with the front runners. If Peugeot managed to stay on pace, Audi would have almost no chance. Usually one of Audi’s quickest pilots, Alan McNish was running a blistering pace for Audi in his R10, but even his efforts were losing time every lap. Five laps into the race, he’d kept his Audi within range and already the Peugeots were beginning to meet traffic, lapping the GT2 cars in the back of the field.
Like the gasoline-powered LM P1 prototypes outpaced by their diesel rivals, the Dutch-built and Audi-powered Spykers were virtually in a class of their own. The two coupes in their new blue and yellow livery were the only two cars in the GT2 class that weren’t a Porsche 911 GT3 RSR or a Ferrari F430 GTC. Their competition featured no only two of the most fabled badges in history, they more importantly boasted factory-backed program development. It’s no surprise then that Spyker boss Victor Muller was resigned that the team was mainly in a race against themselves with a goal simply to finish. Even still, both Spykers started strong and had climbed to seventh and eighth in their twelve car class by the two hour mark.
Given last year’s quick retirement of the JLOC Lamborghini Murcielago, fans of the raging bull may have had their hopes dashed when the Interprogressbank Murcielago pitted and was pushed back into its garage. The differential bolts had sheered and the transmission would need a tear-down in order to repair the problem. Fortunately, the Russian Lamborghini team was made of tough stuff and able, after some delay, to get the car back on the track even though it was now only really in a race with itself to show it could go the distance. Navigating much slower traffic may have handed Audi some advantage, as Ingolstadt’s squad of Le Mans veterans was more acclimated to multiple-class racing than the primarily F1-schooled pilots from Peugeot. Nevertheless, it would take smart pit strategy to help whittle every bit of lead form the Peugeots.
By the first time McNish brought the #2 R10 in for a driver change, he’d completed three normal stints, running longer at the wheel than most American Le Mans Series races. Long stints were one part of the effort as driver changes make pit stops longer… especially for enclosed cars like the Peugeot. That the Audis were able to average 12 laps between fuelling compared with the Peugeots’ 11 helped the German cause too. At three hours into the race, the #85 Spyker pitted with Ralf Kelleners at the wheel. The Dutch GT2 entrant was experiencing engine troubles and, following inspection by the mechanics, the problems were deemed too catastrophic and the team retired their first car from the race. And, at about the same time, the #94 Spyker also pitted with alternator problems, though it only lost ten minutes in the pits getting repairs.
Early in the third hour, pole-winner and race leader Stephane Sarrazin had built a lead of over 40 seconds before he had to bring the #8 Peugeot in for repairs, suffering from minor gear selector issues. The #9 also had some complications that slowed the car, but it was a spin in the Ford Chicane after contact with an LM P2 and a swim in the gravel that delayed the car enough to take it out of contention. Within four hours, Alexandre Premat in the #3 Audi dropped from the lead lap, leaving only three cars and only one Audi on the same number of laps. Just after 7:30 PM, and after a second return with alternator problems, driver Iradj Alexander in the remaining Spyker radioed the pits that his car was experiencing a loss of torque. Before he was able to pit however, the #94 car gave out just past the second chicane on Mulsanne and stranded the car. With this second retirement, Spyker was out of the race. The doors of their garages were closed.
By the seven-hour mark, the race had narrowed to a brawl between the now-leading #7 Peugeot and the aggressively pacing #2 Capello-Kristensen-McNish R10. The historical weight of a win for either car was significant. Tom Kristensen was gunning for a record eighth win as was Audi. Alternatively, a win for Peugeot and France over modern Audi dominance here was in the mind and heart of most Frenchmen and a win by Canadian-born Peugeot driver Jacques Villeneuve on the #7 roster would net him the automotive equivalent of the Triple Crown. He’d won the Indianapolis 500 in 1995 and the F1 championship in 1997. Certainly this fact must have weighed on the Canadian’s shoulders when he hurriedly took the wheel of the lead Peugeot around 8PM. Unfortunately, he took some time to get up to speed and built no further lead on Audi’s Dindo Capello at the wheel of the #2 R10.
Audi figured they might have an advantage if it rained and at 3AM, the forecast went their way. Rain began to fall on the circuit. Up in the Audi V.I.P. box above the front straight, a friend from Audi Sport kept his fingers crossed. He explained, Peugeot had displayed that they too could be blistering in the rain during the Le Mans’ test session on week prior. Fortunately, the French team seemed unable to replicate that dominance in the heat of competition. Perhaps due to aerodynamic changes or the heat of battle, but the Peugeots seemed more on the ragged edge in the rain and the same problem of overheating due to due to dirt and rubber buildup on the radiators that plagued the team in 2007 returned under wet conditions. Each Peugeot was forced to pit in order to deal with the radiator muck and that slowed their pace even more. An hour and a half of rain conditions was all it took for the #2 Audi with Tom Kristensen at the wheel to close the gap and take the lead when Villeneuve pitted to hand over the wheel to teammate Marc Gene.
McNish later took his third multi-stint turn out of order and in the dark hours of night – a stint that lasted three hours and twenty minutes. During that time, Alan extended the lead to three minutes. As the sun rose, it revealed blackened racecars with a dark sheen of oil and dirt, looking as if they’d been to war. The dark muck that coated every car on the track revealed the aerodynamic flow in the patterns with which it coated carbon bodywork. Even the on-air talent at Radio Le Mans was having a hard time differentiating the normally white and blue Aston Martin-powered Lola from the black Peugeots. The #2 Audi still lead the race, and the remaining R10s pressured the Peugeots for podium spots. Even the filthy Interprogressbank Lamborghini still rounded the course and looked poised to complete the race.
With just four hours left, the #1 R10 of Biela, Pirro and Werner dropped from podium contention when Werner spun the car in the Dunlop curves right after leaving the pits at the beginning his stint and on a cold set of slicks. Unfortunately, he smoked the clutch trying to get the car back on track and headed the right direction.
As the Rolex clock above the front straight ticked towards 3PM, the drama was far from over. With less than one hour to go, race-leader Tom Kristensen was hit from the rear by the Barazi Epsilon Zytek prototype. Audi’s heavy solid chassis that may not always seem optimized for short courses in the USA was designed for just this sort of rough-housing. Lesser prototypes would be returning to the pit for, at best, replacement bodywork. Rather, Tom said he radioed in to tell the crew the car was better than before. Peugeot never stopped pressuring the Audi though. At one point, with rain falling on the front side of the track and its challenging Ford and Dunlop chicanes, faster portions of the circuit, namely Mulsanne, remained bone dry. As Audi went for intermediate tires that overheat if run to fast on dry sections, Peugeot decided to go for a Hail Mary by fitting race slicks on the lead Peugeot. The theory was that the car would be much faster in the dry sections, though its driver would need to use extra care in the wet curves – solid logic that paid off, but not enough to close the gap on the leading Audi.
As the #7 Peugeot fought to catch the #2 Audi, the #3 R10 with the junior driving squad of Luhr, Premat and Rockenfeller were pressuring the #9 Peugeot for third place until the last hour when oil issues slowed them enough to drop out of contention. In the beginning, time was an advantage that Peugeot could lay claim to. Now though, time had run out. On the last lap and with virtually no chance to win for Peugeot, Tom Kristensen backed off his pace, waving to the crowd. At this time, competitors usually fall into place and position themselves to be included in photos of the finish. Peugeot however, consummate competitors, passed Tom on the final lap and raced off to narrow the gap rather than slow for the photo.
As the #2 Audi crossed the front straight greeted by the roar of the crowd, Kristensen also crossed into history again with his eighth win at Le Mans. For Dindo, this was his third win at L eMans, though likely the most appreciative of the win was Alan McNish. The Scot, for all his blistering speed, has only won Le Mans once before and never at the wheel of an Audi. It’s been ten years, in fact, since Alan won at La Sarthe and that was in the seat of a Porsche GT1. Contrarily, all but two wins for Tom Kristensen have been with Audi and one of those two was in an Audi-powered Bentley. Reflecting after the race, Tom pointed to this being his sweetest victory of the eight as he’d had a much harder time against his significantly quicker competition. In fact, there may be a theme to Tom’s preference for a good fight as his last win was in 2005 when a dominant Pescarolo car and ACO rules stacked against his Audi R8 made for a similar hard-fought victory.
Another thing proven this year was the dominance of diesel. The field of Audis and Peugeots were so fast that the ACO has already confirmed that air restrictors will be added to diesels in order to level the field. Rumors from our friends at Audi Sport are that Peugeot may field a hybrid next year, so they ignored the threat of future diesel restrictions and displayed all their speed in their quest to beat Audi. More rumors, with silence from Audi, suggest the R10 will likely be replaced next year. Whether a future racecar from Audi will be a diesel or not, or even an LM P1 or not according to Radio Le Mans’ John Hindhaugh, remains to be seen. Audi Sport’s Dr. Ullrich did mention though that Audi operates on a cyclic plan of development and that it had spent its resources this year developing a new DTM racer. Perhaps next year’s budget will then be spent on a new contender for sportscar racing.
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