There must be shouts of joy coming from the Audi factory as the Audi R15 TDI cruised to take first, second and third place at the 2010 Le Mans 24 hours endurance race. This will be Audi’s ninth win at the 8.4 mile circuit, but they still have some way to go before being able to topple Porsche’s record of 16 wins.
Drivers Timo Bernhard, Mike Rockenfeller and Romain Dumas were greeted by a chequered flag at the end of their grueling intensive race, completing 397 laps. They were followed by the other Audi cars of Benoit Treluyer, Marcel Fassler and Andre Lotterer a lap behind, while the Audi of Tom Kristensen, Allan McNish and Dindo Capello were 3 laps behind.
All four Peugeot cars, who by the way were the firm favourite to win this year and secured the top four spots at qualifying, ran into car problems during the course of the race. This gave the Audis the chance to reclaim victory from the Pugs who won the event in 2009.
The surprise of this year’s event was the crash of 1992 Formula 1 champion Nigel Mansell in the 17th minute of the race. The 56 year old entered the race with his sons Greg and Leo in a Ginetta Zytek. The car spun and hit the guardrail at the entrance of the Mulsanne Straight. Mansell was taken to hospital but escaped without serious injuries.
The quote ‘it’s never about winning it’s how you play the game’ springs to mind when describing the teams within Le Mans, as even completing such an event is a reward in itself. In the end Audi’s patience and reliability put the team ahead of the faster Peugeot.
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hurrayyyy!!!….
good guys win… :lol:
Ok…now peugeot a bad guy?..
They always bad guy.. kekekkeke
Go Auto Union!!! :-D
Congratz Audi.. that why sometime luck really does help during race.. :P
wonder when toyota will enter the Le Mans race with their LFA… or Honda with the rebirth NSX…
Why should they do that?
At the Nurbugring 24h in 2010, the fastest LF-A finished 18th, just ahead a Opel Astra OPC and two positions behind a VW Scirocco… ;)
Peugeot lost to a team with better strategy this year. They had the faster cars but not the strategy. Best is for them to go back to the drawing board and be gracious in defeat. There’s always next year.
Well done Audi.
Second that.
audi have had their unlucky moment at the beginning of the race when they got stuck behind one of the BMW GT car when the second safety car was deployed. but at the end it was the car with better reliability and pace won. it was a fantastic achievement for audi once again.
Perhaps Le Mans Endurance racing series should seriously try to invite Toyota & BMW, now that both are free from F1 burdens, and maybe Nissan & Honda also, to join the top LMP1 class. It would be nice to see Porsche again to compete in the top class, but chances could be difficult, given Audi & Porsche are under the same Master.
Otherwise the top honours will remain to be a two horse race, Peugeot vs Audi which is kinda boring to say the least. Dissapointingly this year, the petrol powered & beautiful-sounding Lola-Aston Martins are not even close to the two top marques.
It will be years before Toyota , Nissan and Honda can get an engines right to win the Le Mans dominated by Peugeot, Audi and Porsche.
Right now if any of these Japanese manufacturers will to enter Le Man , it would be same old story repeating in F-1 like winning without claiming any world championship title . Historically shows Honda seems to dominate F-1 at times when Sochiro Honda is still alive but not now .
It will be a Joke now to see any Toyotas, Nissans and Hondas winning Le Mans .
Japanese manufacturers still have a long way to go in terms of technological know how cos they always like modications thru copying others.
that’s my two cents worth
Historically speaking, Toyota could have won Le Mans in a number of occasions -1994 & 1999, but could not achieved so due to bad luck!
In 1999 the leading Toyota GT1 cars suffered from accident & tyre punctures.
Nissan on the other hand, was among the front runners and did achieved pole in early 1990s.
I don’t think engine is a big issue for the Japanese, but is more about aerodynamics performance.
Racers do not believe on LUCK to win race always . There is a saying if it is yours it is yours no matter what . You mean from 1994 until 2010 japanese manufacturers still have no luck to win any Le Mans championship ?
Like i said , till today Japanese still have some ways to go in achieving a world championship title . There is just that little bit more and technological edge that is still lacking in the Japanese technological know in order to win Le Mans championship.
That does not necessary boil down to aerodynamics alone only but their engines endurance are questionable as well .
Hope the japanese engines uses Malle Pistons!! then they might have a chance
and not luck.
I don’t entirely agree with the comparison to the Japs failure in F1. Le Mans is very different to F1. In Le Mans team work and their experience play a bigger role. You can do well in Le Mans despite not having spent a fortune in engineering if you’ve got an experienced endurance race crew, and a good strategy.
It’s different to a short, sprint type race like F1. The biggest goal in Le Mans is to finish the race. If you can just do that (not easy) you are likely to finish respectably.
Out of the 55 cars that raced last weekend, only half finished the race. Some say you need a lot of good luck to finish Le Mans. Audi seemed very lucky last weekend because all 3 cars finished on podium and they did not have any significant technical issues, which is very rare for any team BUT Audi spent a lot of effort preparing the team for this year’s race and so they felt very prepared for all eventualities.
It is no surprise that in any sport, good luck always befalls the competitor who spends the most time preparing and practicing
That endurance racing, the fastest car sometimes doesnt win the race. Too bad about Peugeot, i rooted them to win. Looks like for the other prototypes LM1 to win, they need to switch to turbo diesels.
Good to see BMW back, and hopefully there more manufacturers taking part in Le Mans rather than burning money at F1.
Every year, since the Peugeot vs Audi battle all started a few years ago, Peugeot always had the better(faster) car. They had the better machine. Audi always relied on their deep team experience and fast repair turnaround, long stints and better efficiency. Peugeot the hare, Audi the tortoise.
Peugeot lost, once again because I think they pushed too hard once again. 3 of the Peugeots failed the same way. Engine failure. Probably blown turbo. I was surprised when the last Peugeot (Team Oreca), comfortably in 4th, said they were going to push hard for the win, knowing the problems with the other 2 factory Peugeots. It seems both Team Peugeot and Team Oreca had the same mentality. Push hard, go all the way even it it blows up.. and all 3 cars blew up. The first one had its suspension sheared from its tub.. again maybe because they ran over the curbs too hard, which they did in quali. It’s not the right approach for Le Mans
Audi on the other hand stuck to their game plan. They knew its hard for them to try and push to match the Pugs pace so they just focused on other areas and hoped that the Pugs had trouble. They pushed just enough to keep the Pugs in check but not to the extent that it pushed their own reliability.
Peugeot only won lasts year because Audi handed it to them. They were not ready and struggled and had all the problems you can think of.
the Peugeot 908 was designed solely to win at Le Mans which is a high speed circuit. Audis racers are designed to try and win Le Mans and also do well in the US like the Sebring race. The US market is very important for Audi.
Thats why the 908 is always faster than both the Audi R10, R15 and R15 plus, every time they race in Le Mans.
I hope Peugeot learns and start approaching future races a little differently. The fastest car doesn’t always win at Le Mans or most any endurance race.
It is the ‘best’ car that wins at Le Mans
Ferruccio,
Well written! Was told the Peugeot team were a little crowd unfriendly as well by a friend who watched the race. Humble pie may not be the best to eat but it is the only one now.
Totally agree with you on the fastest car not always having the win handed over on a silver platter. It is the team with the most consistency and best strategy. Speed is a factor of course but when you are about 4 seconds faster per lap than your competitors, you should slow down to about perhaps 1 or 2 seconds ahead. Always best to conserve and preserve the car. It is afterall an endurance race. Wear and tear at an endurance race is very real and it does happen. It can break a car if not managed well.
Hopefully, we will get to see some of these kind of races at SIC. The MMER is, well, short of the glamour that the big boys bring with them.
If not mistaken several years ago, there was a plan for Sepang as a venue for the American Le Mans series (or Asian Le Mans series), but never came to fruition.
Yup in 2001 there plans to bring in a round of the ALMS to Sepang. ALMS is the American Le Mans Series. It is a series of shorter endurance races in the US throughout the year.
There are mainly 3 main events under the ‘Le Mans’ brand
– Le Mans Series (6-8 hour races in Europe)
– American Le Mans Series (similar concept but in US. Longest is the 12hrs of Sebring)
– ’24 Heures du Mans’ (jewel in the crown event, once a year, in June, by invitation only)
all hail audi and tdi power… truly vorsprung durch technik!
to win, you must first finish.
I find Le Mans more practical for the car industry in the long run. Especially if they can put in the following metrics.
a) Best fuel consumption
b) Top average speed achieved in 12 hours.
-> to keep the team honest, and not slow down to turtle speed to meet the fuel consumption.
so its a balance between winning the race, and keeping the car “practical” for day to day use. The marques who wins the race earns instant street creds and the technology in terms of practicality, fuel consumption and reliability translates to far better cars in the future.
p/s: F1 is kinda like a super expensive, fully plastic surgeried Double Ds. You can’t ride em too long or it’ll burst.
LOL.. love that double D analogy :)
ACO, the organizers of Le Mans racing series, are always trying encourage eco friendly technology in racing. There was a special trophy Green X challenge awarded to the most fuel efficient car last weekend.
Next year’s regs allow hybrid technology with the goal of improving fuel consumption rather than faster lap times.
The technology that comes out, in pursuit of victory at Le Mans is very relevant to auto makers and very applicable to their production cars, unlike in F1. Because the technological objectives for le mans and road cars are similar. Both want better efficiency whilst still getting better speed and performance.
Look at the heyday 70s/80s ‘Group C’ days of Le Mans. Remember the iconic Rothmans Porsche 956 and 962 which dominated Le Mans?
Group C was meant to encourage fuel efficiency. The rule was essentially simple. Fixed amount of max fuel for the race. Engineers used creativity to figure out how to make it last whilst ACO reduced the fuel amount by 5% every year.
I think to everyone’s surprise Group C was not only fuel efficient (relative to standards those days) but was also the most exciting cars performance wise.
Le Mans to me is more real as a sport than F1
Ya, those are indeed the finest years of Le Mans, very huge grid, multi manufacturers, beautiful closed-top style machines, until certain Mr Bernie came into the picture and encouraged the use of 3.5 Liter F1 style engine which ultimately led to the collapse of the group C racing. But maybe it’s a cycle..
congrats audi!