The Le Mans 24 Hours 2008
This year‘s race was described in the motoring press as “the greatest in a decade”. Not bad considering the race has 76 years of history. Here's why it was one to savour…
There might be other 24-hour races, but there’s only one Le Mans. This year 55 cars raced, for a whole day and night, around an eight-and-a-half mile circuit roughly three times the size of a full F1 circuit. That’s the equivalent of 16 Grand Prix races back to back.
Four races in one
Add to that the fact that the cars are divided into four classes – by engine sizes and body styles – and you’ve effectively got four races taking place at the same time.
When the flag drops on a rolling start, by the time the top-category LMP1 cars are at full throttle, hitting 220mph down the Mulsanne straight, the last-category GT2 cars are just crossing the starting grid.
(LMP, incidentally, stands for Le Mans Prototypes and signifies purpose-built racing machines. GT means Grand Touring: these designs must be based on a factory model and legal on the roads.)
True Brits
The Le Mans 24 Hours is often – somewhat parochially – described as “a British race that’s held in France”. Traditionally there’s a strong British presence: of this year’s 258,000 record crowd, the organisers reckon that well over a quarter – 70,000 – were Brits.
The British have also done rather well in this race over the years.
This year’s patriotic interest was two-fold. Part of it lay with Aston Martin, whose engine powered the Charouz Racing LMP1 Lola as well as defending its honours in the GT1 category with its factory DBR9s. The other interest lay with the Brits driving other cars, such as Allan McNish (a winner for Porsche in 1998) in the Audi R10.
And so to the starting grid…
The race starts
As the race started, the field was led by the three diesel Peugeot 908 HDi sports prototype coupés. These had a speed advantage of three to four seconds per lap over their nearest rivals, the three Audi R10 TDis. But it soon became clear the Audis were more efficient and ran a lap further before needing to refuel.
As soon as McNish, in the leading Audi, passed the third-running Peugeot on the opening lap, the crowd knew the Audis were not going to give up their recent dominance at Le Mans without a fight.
But over 24 hours, anything can happen…
PlayStation-sponsored
There were other battles to be won at Le Mans, too.
Audi and Peugeot were the two most likely contenders for overall honours but both had their cars powered by diesel engines – whisper-quiet in comparison to the rib-rattling noise made by the Corvettes or Astons in the GT1 category.
This diesel dominance meant the pundits got to talking about an ‘unofficial’ petrol LMP1 class this year. The front-runners for these ‘undercard’ honours were the PlayStation Gran Turismo-sponsored Pescarolo (using a British Judd engine), and the Aston Martin-powered Lola in the GT1 class.
The Aston Lola is a brand new prototype that was only announced in January. It is fast ‘out of the box’, but doesn’t yet have the miles under its belt to gauge reliability and endurance.
The Pescarolo’s owner, Henri Pescarolo, is a local man who won the Le Mans 24 Hours four times as a driver. He now runs his own team and has been on the team-owners’ podium for the past three years – third last year, second the preceding two years.
Let battles commence…
Daylight dawns
Out on the track, as a glorious day moved into evening, the Peugeots still led the Audis. But in the early hours it started to rain…
Having dominated thanks to their aerodynamically efficient closed roof, Peugeot’s drivers suddenly found themselves struggling for visibility because of their small cockpit windows. This put Audi’s legendary Tom Kristensen on a more-than-equal footing.
We knew from test results that the Audis seemed much more competitive in the wet, so it looked as if fate now favoured the whispering R10 – especially given its superior mechanical reliability.
When, shortly after sunrise, the Dane handed the car over to McNish, it was with a 90-second lead. The Scot set out on a marathon three hours and 20 minutes of driving on a wet, slippery track and with his vision impaired by spray. At the end of his stint, he handed over to Dindo Capello having doubled the advantage.
Heroic driving
The track might now be drying out but fate had other tricks in store. In the 22nd hour Kristensen collided with a back-marker but survived – and then the rain started again. Yet come the final circuit, the leading car and its second-placed pursuer were still on the same lap.
At the end of 24 hours of thrilling, hard-fought driving, the race was won by the ‘slower’ Audi, assisted by heroic quadruple-stint drives throughout – McNish in the wet early morning for his second Le Mans win, Kristensen for his record-breaking eighth and Capello for his third.
Elsewhere, the other underdogs – team Aston Martin 009 – triumphed in the GT1 category against the Corvettes, and the PlayStation-backed Pescarolo won the unofficial LMP1 petrol class. It was the perfect outcome for a memorable weekend.
Story by David Wilson
GRAN COMPETITION!
Also held at Le Mans 2008 was the
French final of GT Academy, where Gran Turismo players battled it out
on the PlayStation to win a place driving in the real Dubai 24 Hour race in January. It’s not too late to
enter the UK competition. Follow the link, above right, for more details.
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