Peugeot won the race with a professional performance, as much as Audi also lost the race with an un-Audi-like performance. But no matter what Audi could have done, Peugeot was faster, and didn’t make any errors in strategy, driving, or pit work. Peugeot worked for the win, and earned the win.
Peugeot cars came in first, second, and sixth, with all cars running at the end. Two of the three factory Audi’s were running at the end, one in third and the other barely squeezing into the top twenty. Peugeot won, with an exclamation point.
Peugeot Opens a New Chapter at Le Mans
The 24 Hours of Le Mans is one of those sporting events—like the Indy 500, or the Superbowl—where the meaning of the event, the history, the symbolism, outweigh the actual performance. The game might be a blowout, the race might be dull, but the psychological import of the game to the fans makes the event emotionally fulfilling unlike the best-played game or most exciting race in the regular season. For these events, the history of the event and the story of the game outweigh fleeting statistics like the score, or who played well or poorly.
For the entire twenty-first century, the story of Le Mans was the story of Audi domination. With the R8 and the R10, Audi debuted cars that won, and kept winning. Audi won every Le Mans except one, which was won by a team using modified Audi running gear. In this millennium, Le Mans belonged to Audi.
But all things must pass. This year, Peugeot Sport Total wrote a new story, the story of a team that challenged the giant, learned from the giant, and eventually slew the giant. Maybe it was partly luck, or maybe the giant got lazy. However it happened, Peugeot out-Audied Audi. The story now is of the team that kept coming back until they got it right.
The Mighty Have Fallen
Audi, which through the years had earned the reputation for building cars that always worked, lost some luster as it’s insufficiently tested R15 TDI failed to meet expectations.
Audi debuted the car in February at Sebring, and won the Sebring Twelve Hours. The R15 seemed to be yet another unbeatable Audi, built like a tank, running like a train, winning with ease, backed by a team of drivers and engineers that never made mistakes, planned for every eventuality, and always made the right decisions.
In an effort to save money, Audi didn’t race the R15 between Sebring and Le Mans, though they did a fair amount of testing—but not enough, apparently.
In an effort to help teams save money, the Le Mans organizers cancelled some of the usual practice days. Teams like Audi, which did not have a lot of racing hours in the car, had much less time to get the set-up right, and Audi didn’t get it.
Audi driver Tom Kristensen said that the lack of practice time had left the Audi’s with serious understeer, but that, “Team Joest has dialed in the car so it is running really well now; but the car is down on top speed which made the race a real challenge.” Audi’s engineers were able to fix the cars’ during the race, but how much time was lost making adjustments?
Worse still, Audi suffered from overheating of the intake charge. Apparently the intercooler intakes were clogging, requiring the cars to come in every few hours to be cleaned. The extra time needed to wheel the car into the garage and clean out the intakes added up through a race, erasing any edge the Audi might have gotten through better fuel mileage, and putting the Audi at a serious disadvantage.
No amount of testing compensates for the lack of racing miles. Tests are controlled, managed; races are uncontrollable. Testing may forge the blade, but only racing hones the edge.
Could Audi simply have gotten so used to winning that they lost their edge?
Peugeot Puts on an Audi-Like Performance
Peugeot, on the other hand, was determined to win. They had proven faster than the Audis in race after race for two seasons, but the important win—the win at Le Mans—eluded them. Peugeot was hungry, almost desperate, in fact. Despite having announced plans to build a new car for 2010, many doubted that Peugeot’s board of directors would continue to fund a racing program that couldn’t show results.
The Peugeot 908 Hdi-FAP is the product of two and a half years of development. The weak spots were strengthened, and the strongest part—the twelve-cylinder turbocharged diesel engine—was refined into a powerful, reliable power plant that could run flat-out for 24 hours.
More important, the crews improved. If the Audi crews functioned on every pit stop like the mechanism of an expensive watch, well, the French could build precision timepieces too. Having learned the hard way that a fast car was not necessarily a wining car, Peugeot made sure to bring the whole package—the best drivers, including racing legends like David Brabham, and Franck Montagny, F1 driver Sebastien Bourdais, and sports car phenomenon Simon Pagenaud—driving the fastest, strongest cars, supported by the best crew. In other words, exactly the type of operation Audi had fielded every year.
When Pescarolo Peugeot driver Jean-Christophe Boullion hit the Peugeot of Pedro Lamy in pit lane, people thought of the many pit errors Peugeot had made over the past two year, and assumed that Audi would win, as usual.
But when Alexandre Prémat ran the #3 Audi R15 TDI into the gravel at Indianapolis corner, apparently due to a power-steering failure, people took notice. Whether mechanical failure or driver error, this was not in the Audi script.
The Final Minutes
With 25 minutes to go Sebastian Bourdais in the #8 Peugeot slowed dramatically coming down the Mulsanne straight. He continued to circulate, rather than pitting, while everyone wondered what was wrong with the car, speculating about whether the Audi could catch him. It turned out the Peugeot team simply wanted all the team’s cars to line up for a photogenic finish.
Alex Wurz, one of the drivers of the winning Peugeot, said, “We never damaged the car—that was the key.”
After the Peugeots lined up, the two running Audis paired up, as did the two running Lola Aston Martins, and the Kolles Audis also.
“Peugeot were a little quicker and they were ‘on it’,” said Audi driver Allan McNish. “It’s not a shame to lose to Peugeot.”
With twenty minutes to go, the #63 Corvette pulled into the pits to let the crew clean up the car so it would look good at the finish. “Corvette is an American icon and it should be looking pretty,” explained Corvette driver Johnny O'Connell .Unhappy though the team was not to have both cars finish, the Corvette team totally dominated the class, ending the cars’ careers on a high note.
“Amazing effort year in year out, O’Connell said. “For an American team to come here and win is more than you can imagine! It’s an amazing event.”
Despite several long caution periods in the early morning, the race was still the fourth longest in the history of Le Mans, behind the 1971, 1989, and 1967 races. Absent those yellows, the race would have beaten the record of the legendary Porsche 917K.
Privateer Porsches Dominate P2
LMP2 was a Porsche playground for most of the race, with the Essex RS Spyder and the similar Navi Goh car swapping the lead for the first several hours, until the Navi Goh car fell off the pace. Then, with one hour to go, the Navi Goh Porsche destroyed itself in a tremendous accident.
Shortly thereafter, the KSM Mazda broke down at the entrance to the pits, and burst into flames.
The Essex car won the class handily. The next car in class, the Speedy Racing Sebah Lola Judd, was 39 laps behind, and the next, the OAK Racing Pescarolo Mazda, was another 18 laps further back. Fouth in class, and the last Ps to finish, was the Team Barazi Epsilon -Zytek 07S, was 76 laps off the pace.
The LMP2 class didn’t fare well this year, with nine cars retiring. Though racing luck played its part, the lack of factory participation was probably also a factor.
GT2 Top Ten Full of Ferrari
ALMS racing team Risi Competizione successfully defended its GT2 Le Mans title, with the team of Pierre Kaffer, Mika Salo, and Jaime Melo rolling home easily twho laps ahead of the second-place car. No need to clean the Risi car for the podium—it had nary a mark on it. The Risi drivers were quick, carful and conservative, trusting their skills and their car to carry them to victory, and it did.
Ferraris filled four of the top five spots in GT2 with a lone Spyker C8 sneaking into fifth. Ferraris captured the next five positions too, totally dominating the class. The lone surviving Porsche finished last in class, 196 laps down.
While only one GT2 Porsche finished out of five entered, only one Ferrari DNF’d out of ten entered. This year at least, Ferrari ruled the day and proved itself to be the fastest, most durable GT.
| 77th 24 Heures du Mans—Final Results | |||||
| pos | # | Team | Car | Class | Gap |
| 1 | 9 | Peugeot Sport Total | Peugeot 908 Hdi-FAP | LMP1 | 382 L |
| 2 | 8 | Team Peugeot Total | Peugeot 908 Hdi-FAP | LMP1 | + 1 L |
| 3 | 1 | Audi Sport Team Joest | Audi R15 TDI | LMP1 | + 6 L |
| 4 | 007 | AMR Eastern Europe | Lola Aston Martin | LMP1 | + 9 L |
| 5 | 11 | Team Oreca Matmut AIM | Oreca AIM | LMP1 | + 12 L |
| 6 | 7 | Team Peugeot Total | Peugeot 908 Hdi-FAP | LMP1 | + 13 L |
| 7 | 14 | Kolles | Audi R10 TDI | LMP1 | +1'06.816 |
| 8 | 16 | Pescarolo Sport | Pescarolo Judd | LMP1 | + 14 L |
| 9 | 15 | Kolles | Audi R10 TDI | LMP1 | + 22 L |
| 10 | 31 | Team EssexRacing | Porsche RS Spyde | LMP2 | + 25 L |
| 11 | 12 | Signature Plus | Oreca Judd | LMP1 | + 38 L |
| 12 | 33 | Speedy Racing Sebah | Lola Judd | LMP2 | + 39 |
| 13 | 008 | Aston Martin Racing | Lola Aston Martin | LMP1 | + 40 |
| 14 | 13 | Speedy Racing Sebah | Lola Aston Martin | LMP1 | +29.880 |
| 15 | 63 | Corvette Racing | Corvette C6.R | GT1 | 1'18.232 |
| 16 | 73 | Alphand Aventures | Corvette C6.R | GT1 | + 46 L |
| 17 | 3 | Audi Sport Team Joest | Audi R15 TDI | LMP1 | + 49 L |
| 18 | 82 | Risi Competizione | Ferrari F430 GT | GT2 | + 53 L |
| 19 | 97 | BMS Scuderia Italia | Ferrari F430 GT | GT2 | + 55 L |
| 20 | 24 | OAK Racing | Pescarolo Mazda | LMP2 | + 57 |
| 21 | 23 | Strakka Racing | Ginetta Zytek | LMP1 | +3'20.040 |
| 22 | 83 | Risi Competizione | Ferrari F430 GT | GT2 | + 59 L |
| 23 | 92 | JMW Motorsport | Ferrari F430 GT | GT2 | + 62 L |
| 24 | 4 | Creation Autosportif | Creation Judd | LMP1 | + 63 L |
| 25 | 85 | Snoras Spyker Squadron | Spyker C8 Laviolette | GT2 | +2'35.088 |
| 26 | 78 | AF Corse | Ferrari F430 GT | GT2 | + 65 L |
| 27 | 84 | Team Modena | Ferrari F430 GT | GT2 | + 68 L |
| 28 | 32 | Team Barazi Epsilon | Zytek 07S | LMP2 | + 76 L |
| 29 | 99 | JMB Racing | Ferrari F430 GT | GT2 | + 78 L |
| 30 | 81 | Advanced Engineering | Ferrari F430 GT | GT2 | + 81 L |
| 31 | 66 | Jetalliance Racing Gmbh | Aston Martin DBR9 | GT1 | + 88 L |
| 32 | 96 | Virgo Motorsport | Ferrari F430 GT | GT2 | + 102 L |
| 33 | 87 | Drayson Racing | Aston Martin Vantage | GT2 | + 110 |
| 34 | 75 | Endurance Asia Team | Porsche 997 GT3 RSR | GT2 | + 196 L |
| Retired | 2 | Audi Sport North America | Audi R15 TDI | LMP1 | 104 L |
| Retired | 5 | Navi Team Goh | Porsche RS Spyder | LMP2 | 339 L |
| Retired | 6 | Team LNT | Ginetta Zytek | LMP1 | 178 L |
| Retired | 10 | Team Oreca Matmut AIM | Oreca AIM | LMP1 | 219 L |
| Retired | 17 | Pescarolo Sport Peugeot | 908 Hdi-FAP | LMP1 | 210 L |
| Retired | 25 | RML | Lola Mazda | LMP2 | 273 L |
| Retired | 26 | Bruichladdich Bruneau - | Radical AER | LMP2 | 91 L |
| Retired | 30 | Racing Box | Lola Mazda | LMP2 | 203 L |
| Retired | 35 | OAK Racing | Pescarolo Mazda | LMP2 | 208 L |
| Retired | 39 | KSM | Lola Mazda | LMP2 | 261 L |
| Retired | 40 | Quifel ASM Team | Ginetta Zytek | LMP2 | 46 L |
| Retired | 41 | G.A.C. Racing Team | Zytek | LMP2 | 102 L |
| Retired | 009 | Aston Martin Racing | Lola Aston Martin | LMP1 | 252 L |
| Retired | 64 | Corvette Racing | Corvette C6.R | GT1 | 311 L |
| Retired | 68 | JLOC | Lamborghini | GT1 | 1 L |
| Retired | 70 | Imsa Performance Matmut | Porsche 997 GT3 RSR | GT2 | 102 L |
| Retired | 72 | Alphand Aventures | Corvette C6.R | GT1 | 99 L |
| Retired | 76 | Imsa Performance Matmut | Porsche 997 GT3 RSR | GT2 | 265 L |
| Retired | 77 | Felbermayr Proton | Porsche 997 GT3 RSR | GT2 | 24 L |
| Retired | 80 | Flying Lizard Motorsport | Porsche 997 GT3 RSR | GT2 | 194 L |
| Retired | 89 | Hankook-Farnbacher | Ferrari F430 GT | GT2 | 183 L |
