The 77th 24 Hours of Le Mans just ended with the Peugeot #9 of Brabham, Gene, Wurz at the front. They were followed a sister Peugeot and together they broke Audi’s serial dominance at Le Mans. Two of the new Audi R15s suffered crashes which you can see here and here. The remaining R15 was driven by Capello, Kristensen, McNish to third place overall. Tom Kristensen said that compared to the Peugeot, the Audis ”don’t have the straight line speed.”
In his Pescarolo-entered Peugeot, Benoit Treluyer had a monstrous crash in the middle of the night but was lucky to escape without major injury. This was the fourth Peugeot of the race and was Pescarolo’s best chance at winning Le Mans.
Porsche were happy to have Team Essex win the LMP2 class with a large lead over the second-placed Lola. During a long safety car period they took advantage and changed the rear end of the car in the night. The Lola Coupes however were always in the garage for gearbox and other problems.
GT1 was won by the factory-entered Corvettes and it was a fitting result for their last GT1-class race. Next year Pratt & Miller will shift their program to a customer-driven GT2-spec car. The slowest GT2 class was dominated by a Ferrari 1-2-3 with Risi Competizione taking the win. All these cars can be found in our feature gallery.
