(photo: ACO/LeMans.org)
The old motor racing adage goes as such: "To finish first, first you must finish." I am fairly certain that no one understands that more now than Olivier Quesnel and the rest of the Peugeot Sport clan.
It had been clear the entire week that the Peugeot 908s were, like last year, consistently faster than their chief competition from Audi's R15-pluses. Any time the two teams were out on the track together, the Peugeots' lap times were about two seconds-per-lap faster; the same held true once the race opened up. Every once in a while, a Peugeot driver would turn an incredibly fast lap before being told by his crew to slow it down and help preserve the cars a bit. It was thought by most that this was just Peugeot being conservative and improving their already good chances to with the race.
Instead, as we began to find out just after sunrise, it turned out to be a matter of the engines being a little too strong for their own good. First, it was the #2 car whose exhaust began spitting flame in the early daylight, relinquishing the lead of the race to the Audis. Then, as the #1 Peugeot was trying to chase down the Audis (and doing a fine job of it, to be sure), smoke began emanating from it's right-side exhaust as well. Finally, with about an hour and fifteen minutes remaining, the privately-entered ORECA-Matmut Peugeot began spitting it's own flames from that right bank of exhaust pipes. With car #3 having had a suspension failure before nightfall, all four Peugeot 908s were in the garage, watching the rival Audis cross the line in formation when the clock hit zero.
Audi, while their rivals down the pit lane were falling away, continued to be the model of consistency and professionalism that they had been since their first victory in 2000. Apart from a rare moment of emotion from team boss Wolfgang Ullrich when the #7 spun to avoid the stricken BMW Art Car, everything was calm, cool, and collected from the four rings as they endured Le Mans once again.
In the LMP2 class, it was all about the Strakka HPD/Acura, who kept out of trouble while their closest competitors from Highcroft began developing issues after daybreak. Many other LMP2 cars found themselves having accidents as they had to get past slower GT cars while watching their mirrors for quicker LMP1 cars.
GT1 was the class of major attrition this time around, as seemingly none of the cars survived without some sort of problem. The Ford GTs were all quick in the early going, but fiery mechanical failures and crashes ended up taking them out. The Aston Martin DBR9 started out the race quickly, but it too could not stay in one piece. Both of the Luc Alphond Corvettes had their share of issues during the night. The Japanese Lamborghini Owners' Club Murcielago spent significant time in the garage during the darkness before being retired for good. All of this left the Larbre Competition Saleen S7R to waltz home with, in its final of 10 years at Le Mans, the Saleen's first GT1 class victory.
GT2, while not as brutal as GT1, had its fair share of cars fall out of the race. It was clearly a battle between the factory Corvette C6.R ZR1s and Risi Competizione's Ferraris as the race began. Risi Ferrari #82 had to start at the back after a failed tech inspection, but it immediately shot up the order in the early laps. The Risi had made it to the top of the field when it started developing transmission issues and was forced to drop out. As day broke over the circut, Risi's other car began showing smoke from its exhaust and, after a quick once-over from the crew, it was retired.
That left the Corvettes to circle around in the top two spots, but they ran into issues as well. First, the #63 was caught off the racing line as Peugeot #1 was charging past and lost control into the barriers, tearing the back end of the car apart. Not too much later, Corvette #64 developed a mechanical issue that, once the car came to the garage, was clearly not going to be fixed. That left Felbemayr Proton Porsche #77 to take the lead and hold it to the end of the race.
As far as my predictions went, you'll notice that I listed all of my predicted class winners as cars that fell out of the race. As I mentioned in my preview, this is not an easy race to predict. Certainly, there are only two teams with a realistic shot to take the overall victory these days, but you never know what might happen to those two teams. There was never any indication going into the weekend that the Peugeots might be over-stretching their engines and the Audis would be so much more reliable. It's unpredictability like that which makes the 24 Hours of Le Mans such an interesting race.
Now we can look for advertisements proclaiming the superiority of Audi's TDI technology, and assurances from Peugeot that whatever problem they had will be learned from, and the lessons learned will improve their future products. Next year, many of the rules will be changed, so it will be interesting to see what the various automakers present us with next time the teams descend on Le Mans.
We return to your normally-scheduled IndyCar programming this week as that circus pulls into Newton, Iowa. See you later!
No comments:
Post a Comment