|
|
TEAM QUAIL AT
The History - 2005-2009 |
2005
|
||
|
The 2005 Aston Martin DBR9 |
Aston Martin returned to
In qualifying the Pescarolos took the front row 2 seconds ahead of the leading Audi, and Aston Martin qualified in 17th overall (best in class) some 4 seconds faster than the Corvettes.
In both P1 and GT1 classes the race turned out to be a tortoise and hare contest. They were both very close until the last hours, but the pace of the leading cars was undone by the grater reliability of the chasers, who spent less time in the pits. In the case of Aston Martin this was not helped by two stop-go penalties on Daran Turner for crossing the white line trackside.
From the start the No. 16 Pescarolo Judd driven by Emmanuel Collard, Jean-Christophe Boullion and Erik Comas, and the No. 17 Pescarolo Judd team of Sebastien Loeb, Eric Helary and Soheil Ayari were able to run a race pace that was five seconds or more quicker than anyone else, stretching out a lead of over a minute in the first hour. They were chased hard by the trio of Audi R8 cars - No. 2 Champion Audi of Tom Kristensen, JJ Lehto, and Marco Werner, the sister No. 3 Champion Audi, driven by Emanuele Pirro, Allan McNish and Frank Biela, and the No. 4 Audi Playstation Team Oreca Audi crew of Frank Montagny, Jean-Marc Gounon and Stephane Ortelli. But after that, it started to go wrong. One car got hit by a slower runner, which turned in to a corner without realised the prototype was going down the inside; the other hit gearbox problems. Even then, their extra pace would have been enough to get them back on top, given a clear run to the flag. After a few other problems the race ended for the No.17 when Ayari went hard into the wall at the Playstation Chicane late on Sunday morning. The No.16 car made it to the finish, two laps down in second place, but it was plagued by overheating problems and was simply unable to sustain its earlier breathtaking pace.
So the No.3
Audi, took the chequered flag at 4pm on Sunday afternoon – and, in doing
so, Tom Kristensen became the most successful driver in
The final place on the podium went to the No. 2 Champion Audi, six laps behind the winner. The weather undoubtably played into the hands of the Audi crews; the race took place in unremittingly hot conditions, with daily high temperatures around 35 Celsius, which almost certainly contributed to the overheating problems encountered by the Pescarolo car.
In the LMP2, of the thirteen cars which started, only five made it to the finish, and every single one had significant problems. The class win was finally claimed by the No. 25 RML Lola MG squad of Thomas Erdos, Mike Newton and Warren Hughes; they lost almost half an hour in the very first hour of the race with gearbox problems, and another 20 minutes in the early hours with an electrical problem, but they still managed to make it to the finish five laps clear of Claude Yves Gosselin, Karim Ojjeh and Adam James Sharpe in the No. 36 Belmondo Courage Ford. The sister No. 37 Belmondo Courage Ford, driven by Paul Belmondo, Didier Andre and Rick Sutherland limped home in third, a further six laps down.
The LM GT1 clas was dominated by four cars; the two Aston Martin DBR9 cars – No.58, driven by Thomas Enge, Peter Kox and Pedro Lamy, and the No.59 squad of David Brabham, Darren Turner and Stephane Sarrazin, and the two Chevy Corvette C6.R cars, the No.63 crew of Ron Fellows, Johnny O’Connell and Max Papis, and the sister No.64 squad of Oliver Gavin, Olivier Beretta and Jan Magnussen.
Again the tortoise and hare simile is appropriate, with the Aston seemingly capable of leaving the Corvette by several seconds a lap. In addition the Aston Martin teams were able to run their tyres for two stints, where the Corvette needed a tyre change at every stop. But again, the huge endurance experience of the Corvette team, especially in running in such hot conditions, paid dividends. They were able to get close enough to the Aston pace to keep them honest – helped by a number of punctures and stop-and-go penalties suffered by the Aston Martin pair.
In the final hours of the race, it all went wrong for the Prodrive-run Aston Martin team. The No.58 car came to a halt out in the Porsche Curves, apparently left stranded by a fuel feed problem; at almost exactly the same time the No.59 car was wheeled into the pit garage to have the main radiator changed. The double-whammy handed the class one-two to the Corvette pair, with Magnussen bringing the No.64 home two laps ahead of O’Connell in the No.63. Stephane Sarrazin had the consolation prize of taking third for Aston Martin, sixteen laps down on the leading Corvette.
In LM GT2 Porsche again dominated. Fourteen cars started the race, eight cars finished; eight Porsche took the start, and seven finished. In a fight that went right down to the wire, the No. 71 Alex Job Porsche 911 GT3 RSR claimed the win at their second attempt; driving duties went to Lea Hindery, Mike Rockenfeller and Marc Lieb. They came home only a lap ahead of Jorg Bergmeister, Patrick Long and Timo Bernhard in the No. 90 White Lightning Racing Porsche 911 GT3 RSR; the No. 80 Flying Lizard Porsche 911 GT3 RSR crew of Johannes van Overbeek, Lonnie Pechnik and Seth Nieman couldn’t live with the pace of the leading two crews, coming in ten laps off the class winner.
The British No. 95 Racesport Peninsula TVR Tuscan 400 R squad of John Hartshorne, Richard Stanton and Piers Johnson, also finished just over 80 laps behind the Alex Job car. Still, they had outlasted the better-fancied Ferrari, Spyker and Panoz entries.
2006
The headlines comming into the race was all about Audi's new revolutionary turbo-diesel prototype the R10 TDI and its attempt to win with the first purpose-designed turbo diesel engine. Yet at the practice weekend the Pescarolos were a second a lap quicker. However in qualifying the Audis took the front row, with Rinaldo Capello achieving 3min 30.466 sec. This could be the last chance fpr the Pescarolos, with Peuegot due to intoduce a new diesel next year, and their need to build a new car to meet new regulations and still without a sponser. The race started an hour later than traditional due to the FIFA World Cup. The circiut hd also changed with the addition of a new chicane near the entrance to the Dunlop curves, and by the pit exit.
|
|
The Audi's blaze away from the start, but soon the No.7 McNish/Capello/Kristensen car had fuel feed problems which cost them 20 minutes or about 6 laps on the 2nd placed Pescarolo. During the night they clawed this back to 3 laps when at about 8am they had to change the turbo-charger after an accident with an Aston Martin, losing another 20 minutes. These, and a further stop to inspect the bodywork ended Tom kristensen’s attempt at a seventh successive win. By 8.30am the No.8 Audi of Biela/Pirro/Werner was cruising 3 laps ahead of the leading Pescarolo and 13 of the second Audi, despite having a gear box change in the 11th hour. They were never headed again. |
The Audi thus became the first diesel to win
In the GT1 class a titanic battle raged for the entire race. In the end a
Corvette, the 'works' No.64 Corvette C6.R driven by Oliver Gavin, Olivier
Beretta and Jan Magnussen, won its class again at
In LMP2, where the attrition was particularly fierce, the No.25 RML Lola AER of
Thomas Erdos, Mike Newton and Andy Wallace managed a solid win, having led the
class for almost the entire race Behind it were the No.24 Binnie Motorsports
Lola Zytek of William Binnie, Allen Timpany and Yojiro Terada, and the No.27
Miracle Motorsports Courage AER of John Macaluso, Andy Lally and Ian James.
GT2 saw three different marques on the podium. The winner was the No.81 Team
LNT Panoz Esperante driven by the all-British team of Tom Kimber-Smith, Richard
Dean, and Lawrence Tomlinson, the first non-Porsche winner of the class. Second
place was won by the No.83 Seikel Motorsport Porsche 911 GT3 RSR driven by Lars
Erik Nielsen, Pierre Ehret, and Domink Farnbacher, which suffered misfortune in
the last hour of the race and what seemed certain victory was denied them by a
technical problem. In third place, in the model's
2007
This year Le Mans welcomed back Peugeot in the
908HDI turbo-diesel to challenge the might of the Audi R10 diesel, and one of
them started on pole: albeit because they set a time in a rare dry window in an
early qualifying session, and then the latter sessions were run in the rain.
The team was headed by ex Formula 1 world champion Jacques Villeneuve. Before
the weekend even got under way the Arena Zytek was withdrawn due to damage
sustained in a crash on the test weekend. The good news was that Tom Kristensen
had recovered from serious whiplash injuries sustained earlier in the year to
claim a drive for Audi.
At the start the Peugeot of Sebastien Bourdais lost
the lead to Audi by spinning at the second corner as the rain started along
with the race and caught out the field on slick tyres. The safety car was
deployed three times early on as the rain and sun alternated, making tyre
choice a difficult process. An early casualty was Mike Rockenfeller in the #3
Audi who crashed into the barriers at the start of the Mulsanne straight
causing significant damage to both the car and the armco.
As the race developed into the evening and night
the weather stayed dry and the two remaining Audis stretched their lead by up
to 10 seconds a lap. Allan McNish in the leading #3 Audi set a lap-time of
three minutes 27.204 seconds. Then, after 16½ hours unbelievably a wheel fell
off #3 Audi whilst Rinaldo Capello was driving at
With 2 hours to go the rain returned, and ½ hour
later a Peugeot retired. Several cars appear to have “parked” their
cars in the garages to protect their position, to reappear at the finish, With
50 minutes to go the safety car came out again and the race finished in the
pouring rain.
Thus the #1 Audi of Biela, Pirro and Werner cruised
to a win over the Peugeot of Minassian, Gene and Villeneuve with Pescarolos
third and fourth. In the LMP2 class the Binnie Lola-Zytec finished ahead of the
Barazi Epsilon Zytec, the only two finishers. In GT1 Aston martin took first
and third with Corvette in second. In the GT2 class Porsche won ahead of
Ferrari.
Links to other pages