© Automobile Club de l'Ouest website, adapted for use by tpix Motorsport.

The Story of a Great Race

The 73rd running of the 24 Hours of Le Mans can be summarised by referring to the well-known parable of the tortoise and the hare. Admittedly, describing a car capable of getting around the 13.65km Circuit de la Sarthe in under 3 minutes 40 may be straining credibility, but it is still relevant.

The hares in this case were the pair of Pescarolo cars – the No. 16 Pescarolo Judd driven by Emmanuel Collard, Jean-Christophe Boullion and Erik Comas, and the No. 17 Pescarolo Judd team of Sebastien Loeb, Eric Helary and Soheil Ayari. They monopolised the front row of the grid, and were able to run a race pace that was five seconds or more quicker than anyone else. The tortoises were the trio of Audi R8 cars - No. 2 Champion Audi of Tom Kristensen, JJ Lehto, and Marco Werner, the sister No. 3 Champion Audi, driven by Emanuele Pirro, Allan McNish and Frank Biela, and the No. 4 Audi Playstation Team Oreca Audi crew of Frank Montagny, Jean-Marc Gounon and Stephane Ortelli.

New regulations for prototypes were introduced this year, but cars built to the previous rules were allowed to take part with significant penalties, such as additional weight, smaller rear wing and smaller air intake restrictor. The Pescarolo pair ran under the new rules, while the Audi trio were forced to accept the restrictions for older cars. However, the current generation Audi R8 has won this race every time it has competed, and the teams had a huge database of past experience to draw on; would that be enough to offset the superior pace of the Pescarolos?

At first, it didn’t seem that way. When the race got under way at 4pm on Saturday the two Pescarolo cars simply drove away from the field, stretching out a lead of over a minute in the first hour. But after that, it started to go wrong. One car got hit by a slower runner, which turned in to a corner without realising the prototype was going down the inside; the other hit gearbox problems. Even then, their extra pace would have been enough to get them back on top, given a clear run to the flag – but that’s rarely how Le Mans works. After a few other problems the race ended for the No.17 when Ayari went hard into the wall at the Playstation Chicane late on Sunday morning. The No.16 car made it to the finish, two laps down, but it was plagued by overheating problems and was simply unable to sustain its earlier breathtaking pace.

So the tortoise, in the shape of the No.3 Audi, took the chequered flag at 4pm on Sunday afternoon – and, in doing so, Tom Kristensen became the most successful driver in Le Mans history, claiming his seventh win. Even more remarkable is that he has won the last six races in succession – a truly stunning record.

The final place on the podium went to the No. 2 Champion Audi, six laps behind the winner; given the restrictions imposed on the Audi teams, this is testament to the strength and longevity of a car which first raced here in 2000. Of course, the weather played into the hands of the Audi crews; the race took place in unremittingly hot conditions, with daily high temperatures around 35 Celsius, which almost certainly contributed to the overheating problems encountered by the Pescarolo car.

By contrast, LMP2 could best be described as ‘last man standing’ Of the thirteen cars which started, only five made it to the finish, and every single one had significant problems. The class win was finally claimed by the No. 25 RML Lola MG squad of Thomas Erdos, Mike Newton and Warren Hughes; they lost almost half an hour in the very first hour of the race with gearbox problems, and another 20 minutes in the early hours with an electrical problem, but they still managed to make it to the finish five laps clear of Claude Yves Gosselin, Karim Ojjeh and Adam James Sharpe in the No. 36 Belmondo Courage Ford. The sister No. 37 Belmondo Courage Ford, driven by Paul Belmondo, Didier Andre and Rick Sutherland limped home in third, a further six laps down.

Right from the start it was clear that the LM GT1 winner would be one of four cars, taken from the two Aston Martin DBR9 cars – No.58, driven by Thomas Enge, Peter Kox and Pedro Lamy, and the No.59 squad of David Brabham, Darren Turner and Stephane Sarrazin, and the two Chevy Corvette C6.R cars, the No.63 crew of Ron Fellows, Johnny O’Connell and Max Papis, and the sister No.64 squad of Oliver Gavin, Olivier Beretta and Jan Magnussen.

Again the tortoise and hare simile is appropriate, with the Aston seemingly capable of leaving the Corvette by several seconds a lap. In addition the Aston Martin teams were able to run their tyres for two stints, where the Corvette needed a tyre change at every stop. But again, the huge endurance experience of the Corvette team, especially in running in such hot conditions, paid dividends. They were able to get close enough to the Aston pace to keep them honest – helped by a number of punctures and stop-and-go penalties suffered by the Aston Martin pair.

In the final hours of the race, it all went wrong for the Prodrive-run Aston Martin team. The No.58 car came to a halt out in the Porsche Curves, apparently left stranded by a fuel feed problem; at almost exactly the same time the No.59 car was wheeled into the pit garage to have the main radiator changed. The double-whammy handed the class one-two to the Corvette pair, with Magnussen bringing the No.64 home two laps ahead of O’Connell in the No.63. Stephane Sarrazin had the consolation prize of taking third for Aston Martin, sixteen laps down on the leading Corvette.

Before the race got under way, the question in LM GT2 was whether anyone could break the Porsche domination. The short answer: No. Fourteen cars started the race, eight cars finished; eight Porsche took the start, and seven finished. In a fight that went right down to the wire, the No. 71 Alex Job Porsche 911 GT3 RSR claimed the win at their second attempt; driving duties went to Lea Hindery, Mike Rockenfeller and Marc Lieb. They came home only a lap ahead of Jorg Bergmeister, Patrick Long and Timo Bernhard in the No. 90 White Lightning Racing Porsche 911 GT3 RSR; the No. 80 Flying Lizard Porsche 911 GT3 RSR crew of Johannes van Overbeek, Lonnie Pechnik and Seth Nieman couldn’t live with the pace of the leading two crews, coming in ten laps off the class winner.

And the non-Porsche finisher? The tiny British No. 95 Racesport Peninsula TVR Tuscan 400 R squad of John Hartshorne, Richard Stanton and Piers Johnson, which came home just over 80 laps behind the Alex Job car. Still, they had outlasted the better-fancied Ferrari, Spyker and Panoz entries.

all other entries retired, cars must be running to be classified.