Audi R10 dominates 24-Hours

Audi’s diesel-powered R10 TDI dominated the 75th Le Mans 24-Hours at the weekend. It was the Ingolstadt-based manufacturer’s fourth successive triumph in the historic race and its seventh win in eight years.
However, Peugeot delivered a spirited performance in its first 24-Hours appearance since 1993 and two of the three R10s crashed out during the rain-affected race, leaving the sole #1 Team North America R10 TDI, driven by Frank Biela, Marco Werner and Emanuele Pirro to maintain Audi’s lead in the final few hours.
Peugeot initially started from pole position, with Sebastien Bourdais leading the field away on the opening lap in the #8 car, but the French team fell back as Audi applied pressure, and within the opening hour, the three R10s occupied the first three places.
Luhr handed over the #3 Team Joest Audi to Mike Rockenfeller, who crashed at Tetre Rouge and damaged the rear of the car and the circuit’s safety barrier. The R10 was out of the race and the Safety Car was deployed for a lengthy period while the barrier was repaired.
A brief rain shower followed, as did another Safety Car period, and once the confusion ended the #1 Audi had dropped down to fifth behind the #8 and #7 Peugeots and 16 Pescarolo Sport Judd 01.
Peugeot suffered its first major mechanical problem during the fifth hour when Sarrazin pitted the #8 car with smoke billowing from the right rear of the car. The 908 then rejoined the race back in eighth position, which handed second position to Biela’s Audi.
Audi gradually extended its lead over Peugeot throughout the night, with a particularly strong stint from Allan McNish in the #2 car. By the morning, the two Audi cars were comfortably ahead.
McNish handed over to Rinaldo Capello, but on lap 263 the #2 Audi’s left-rear wheel became detached from the car at Indianapolis and sent the Italian’s R10 spinning into the tyre barrier on the inside of the circuit. Capello was able to climb out of the car and walked away unaided, but the car was soon retired from the race.
Peugeot suffered another problem with a couple of hours to go when the #7 car – driven, among others, by 1997 F1 World Champion Jacques Villeneuve – made an unexpected stop and was pushed into the garage for considerable work to the back of the car, and this allowed the #8 Peugeot up to second place. The car briefly returned to the track but was retired from the race soon thereafter.
Pescarolo put in a very strong performance to finish third with the #16 Judd 01 of Emmanuel Collard, Jean-Christophe Boullion and Romain Dumas. The car had a brief incident when it was pitched into a spin and touched the barrier, but the high attrition rate in the class meant that the car was able to recover to a high position.
The #18 Pescarolo-Judd 01 driven by Martin Short, Joao Barbosa and Stuart Hall ran consistently in the top ten and slowly moved up the field as others retired. However, there were a large number of problems experienced amongst the remaining LMP1 runners.
In the GT1 class, Aston Martin triumphed at Le Mans for the first time since 1959. The winning #009 Aston Martin Racing DBR9 was driven to an impressive fifth place overall by David Brabham, Rickard Rydell and Darren Turner. There were six DBR9s entered for this year’s Le Mans 24 Hours – all of them made it to the finish.
Meanwhile, torrential rain towards the end of the race all around the circuit forced the Safety Car to be deployed for an hour, before the cars were released to race for the last ten minutes.
“I think this is the most difficult win we have had here so far,” Dr Wolfgang Ullrich, Audi Sport Competition Manager, said. “There was a lot of competition from Peugeot, and also Pescarolo who did a great job the whole race and over the weekend, and there was pressure on us from the beginning right to the end so we couldnt lose a second without thinking what that meant for us.”