Emmanuele Pirro, Tom Kristensen and Frank Biela drove a flawless race to win the 2002 Le Mans 24 Hours for the third successive time – and head up a 1-2-3 finish for Audi.
Despite suffering three punctures, Emmanuele Pirro, Tom Kristensen and Frank Biela drove a flawless race in the #1 Audi R8 to capture the 2002 Le Mans and complete a 1-2-3 finish for the German manufacturer on Sunday.
The victory marked the first time in the 70-year history of the race that the same driver squad had won for three years in succession.
And to cap a victorious day for the Volkswagen Group, Bentley (another marque in the VW stable) finished fourth, albeit thirteen laps adrift of the triple winners. A solid race by Andy Wallace, Eric van de Poele and Butch Leitzinger and some timely retirements of competitors moved the EXP8 up the standings.
Starting from second on the grid, the #1 Audi first took the lead from the polesitting #2 on Saturday evening. Kristensen took the lead when Christian Pescatori suffered a puncture on the Hunadieres straight, losing a great deal of time limping back to the pits with only shreds of tire left on the rim.
After that, the #1 Audi would never again be headed, in one of the longest leads in Le Mans history, though still not quite a match for the 1981 flag-to-flag victory of Jacky Ickx and Derek Bell in the Porsche 936/81.
“To win it once was great. The second time was fantastic, but to be a three time winner is just unbelievable,” said Biela. “If you had said to me yesterday morning that I was going to win I wouldn’t have believed you.”
“It’s just like a dream,” said Reinhard Joest, the manager of the Audi Sport team. “But sometimes dreams do come true.”
The shredded tire was to be only one of nine punctured tires for Audi in the race; the #1 car suffered three, while the #2 car of Pescatori, Rinaldo Capello and Johnny Herbert bore the brunt of the tire damage with four, and the #3 with two.
The #2 Audi still finished second, in spite of some spirited driving by Herbert, as Pirro and Kristensen’s steady pace was not to be matched in the long run. “Dindo” Capello still recorded a second Le Mans pole, but both Capello and Pescatori are still looking for that elusive first Le Mans victory.
As if it had been planned in advance, the #3 Audi finished third, with Michael Krumm, Philippe Peter and Marco Werner driving a steady race to recover from a formation-lap puncture that seemed, at the time, to set the tone for the day for Audi.
Other teams also suffered from tire problems, though to a lesser extent. Most notable was the #25 WR-Peugeot team, whose puncture on the penultimate lap of the race would lose them the LMP 675 class victory, and hand it to the #29 Reynard-Lehman VW.
Not only was Audi faster than it had ever been, it was also even more reliable. In the past three years, Audi had perfected the modular rear end to allow it to quickly replace the failed gearboxes that seemed to plague the cars, but this year there was not a gearbox failure among the four Audi entries.
The only attempt at a serious challenge to the Audis came from an unexpected source, however. Neither Panoz nor Cadillac had the pace to be a factor, and, instead, the MG team, running in the “junior” LMP 675 class, threw down the gauntlet, outracing all the LMP 900 cars bar the top three Audis.
But it was not destined to be MG’s year, either. None of the MG LMP675 cars made it to the finish. The number 26 machine of Anthony Reid, Warren Hughes and Johnny Kane retired from fourth place with transmission failure just after midnight and the number 27 car driven by Mark Blundell, Julian Bailey and Kevin McGarrity was comfortably in the top 10 when its engine unexpected failed with just a third of the race left to run.
Beyond the Bentley, it was the Oreca Dallara-Judd LMPs, finishing a Le Mans for the first time for John Judd’s Engine Developments, with #15 (Olivier Beretta, Pedro Lamy and Erik Comas) in fifth, and #14 (Stephane Sarrazin, Franck Montagny and Nicolas Minassian).
The #6 Cadillac of East London-born Wayne Taylor, finished 30 laps down in ninth place after suffering numerous technical problems. Just before 8 am on Sunday morning, Taylor’s co-driver, Christian Tinseau, suffered a puncture, driving back into its pit with Cadillac’s rear-end scraping along the track surface – followed by JJ Lehto in the other Cadillac, also with a puncture.
The #7 Cadillac of Lehto was able to rejoin the race fairly quickly, with Emmanuel Collard taking over the rains after the Cadillac pit crew “rebuilt” one of the diffusers using duct tape. Still, with the car’s earlier problems, the car’s cumulative pit time now exceeded 80 minutes.
However, Taylor’s #6 Cadillac had a more serious problem: the rear axle had been damaged, and the crew had to pull the car into the garage for a quick 15-minute replacement, dropping the #6 car from fifth place down the field.
The other South African in action at the Le Mans 24 Hours, Werner Lupberger, crashed his Judd-powered Ascari KZR1 after the British car suffered a left rear suspension failure on lap 17.
The 25 year-old South African had been running in a strong 15th position, but Team Ascari race director Ian Dawson had no choice but to retire the damaged # 21 car two hours into the race.
“I was just arriving into Indianapolis when the rear end just sat down. There was nothing I could do, even when I stood on the brakes,” Lupberger said. “Luckily I missed the inside wall and aimed for the outside one, it was a fairly big impact. You are not allowed to pick up spares any more and I couldn’t drive back to the pits as I would have damaged the gearbox and transmission on the asphalt.”
Final standings: Le Mans 2002
Pos Driver Team Car Time
1. Biela/Kristensen/Pirro Audi Sport Team Joest, Audi R8, 375 laps
2. Capello/Herbert/Pescatori Audi Sport Team Joest, Audi R8, 374 laps
3. Krumm/Peter/Werner Audi Sport North America, Audi R8, 372 laps
4. Wallace/Leitzinger/van de Poele Bentley EXP Speed 8, 362 laps (GTP class winner)
5. Beretta/Lamy/Comas Team ORECA, Dallara-Judd LMP, 359 laps
6. Sarrazin/Montagny/Minassian Team ORECA, Dallara-Judd LMP, 359 laps
7. Ara/Dalmas/Katoh Team Goh Audi, Audi R8, 358 laps
8. Lammers/Hillerbrand/Coronel Racing for Holland, Dome S101, 351 laps
9. Taylor/Angelli/Tinseau Team Cadillac, Cadillac 345 laps
10. Bouillon/Lagorce/Bourdais Pescarolo Sport, Courage-Peugeot C60 343 laps
GTS class winner
11. Fellows/O’Connell/Gavin, Corvette Racing Chevrolet Corvette, 335 laps
LMP675 class winner
17. Deletraz/Lechner/Pillon, Noel del Bello Racing, Reynard-VW, 317 laps
GT class winner
16. Buckler/Lohr/Bernhard, The Racers Group, Porsche 911 GT3-RS, 322 laps
