Audi’s dreams came almost perfectly into reality in the 80th Le Mans 24 Hours race. Ideally the German factory team would have finished 1–2–3–4; they managed 1–2–3, a huge achievement after 24 hours of flat-out racing.
Lotterer, Benôit Tréluyer, and Marcel Fässler drove an almost flawless race, with just a bit of car-to-car contact and no mechanical failures in more than 3000 miles of competition. The #1 Audi R18 e-tron quattro hybrid’s flywheel-charged electric part-time all-wheel-drive system worked without a hitch, and the rest of the car was as reliable as ever.
Lotterer, Tréluyer, and Fässler were the defending champions; they won the 79th Le Mans 24 as well. A new generation of Le Mans heroes has started to solidify its legends.
“This was a race of the kind you can arguably experience only at Le Mans,” said Head of Audi Motorsport Dr. Wolfgang Ullrich in a press release. “You should never rejoice too early at Le Mans, which was obvious again especially on Sunday noon.
“The whole world was already talking about a one-two-three-four victory and all of a sudden two of our cars had accidents almost simultaneously. That the squad repeatedly managed to repair the cars so quickly after the slips clearly speaks for Audi Sport Team Joest that can simply be banked on at Le Mans.
“On the whole, I can only take my hat off to the entire squad of Audi Sport that worked extremely hard for a year to make this triumph possible.”
“It was a very big challenge to develop a hybrid car in such a short time that is quick and able to hold up for 24 hours, he continued. ”This is a great day for Audi Sport, for Audi and for the e-tron quattro.”
The #2 R18 e-tron driven by Allan McNish, Tom Kristensen and Dindo Capello finished second, held back by a small driver error late in the race. The car worked perfectly; a tiny slip-up by Allan McNish cost the team the win, which certainly must sting, but the trio still drove an excellent race.
The tried and true #4 Audi R18 Ultra turbodiesel driven by Oliver Jarvis, Marco Bonanomi, and Mike Rockenfeller finished third, four laps behind the leaders.
Toyota, Audi’s principal rival, saw both its TS030 Hybrids eliminated by accidents in the first quarter of the race. Anthony Davidson was rammed by a GTE-Am Ferrari five hours into the race. The cars flew and flipped before crashing down hard enough to break two of Davidson’s vertebrae. Davidson will be back behind the wheel in a few months, but his day was done.
Kaz Nakajima, impatient after waiting for the hour-long caution period caused by the Davidson wreck, tried to force his way through traffic and slammed into the Nissan DeltaWing, totally the Nissan and doing enough damage to the Toyota that it was in and out of the garage until it retired five hours later.
The experimental DeltaWing ran decently, if not spectacularly, for the first six hours, though it lost 26 laps to a gearshift problem. The car’s drivers were waiting until morning to really unleash the car; sadly, no one got a chance to see how quickly the odd tricycle-like vehicle might have lapped.
P2 went to the American Starworks team in their HPD ARX-03b-Honda, finishing seventh overall, 25 laps behind the leaders.
The driving team of Enzo Potolicchio, Ryan Dalziel, and Thomas Kimber-Smith and the Starworks crew delivered the perfect endurance race: no bobbles, no errors, no pit errors, steady quick laps, and of course, good luck, to have no mechanical failures and not get caught in others’ accidents. Some say luck favors the prepared, and the Starworks team was obviously completely ready to go all the way.
GTE-Pro went to the #51 AF Corse Ferrari—not the one which the team brought to the track at the start of the week, though. After Giancarlo Fissichella destroyed the car on Wednesday, the team rebuilt it from a bare chassis, finishing late Friday evening. The drivers were figuring out how the new car worked during the race; and even with that handicap, they managed to run as fast and use less fuel that the competition. More important, the drivers avoided a replay of the Wednesday incident; they never pout a wheel wrong, and cruised to victory two laps ahead of the nearest rival. Fittingly, Fissichela drove the final stint.
GTE-Am came down to the final few minutes, as Pedro Lamy in the #50 Larbre Corvette turned in a series of blazing laps to catch Anthony Pons in the #67 IMSA Matmut Porsche RSR. After both cars pitted together 30 minutes from the finish, Lamy ate up huge chunks of time with every lap, erasing a 16-second gap in thirteen minutes catching the IMSA car five laps from the end..
The drama didn’t end there. Pedro Lamy was almost over his maximum driving time; he had to make a last-lap pit-stop to switch seats with Julian canal or risk being disqualified. The IMSA Porsche couldn’t take advantage of this break, though; the car was stricken with a flat left rear tire three minutes from the end of the race.
Both cars had to hustle into the pits —the Porsche much more slowly—and hustle back out to get back on the track before the race ended. Both made it and were scored as running at the finish, but it was close.
Of the original 56 entrants, 35 were running at the finish, but two of these—The #74 Corvette Racing C6 ZR1 and the #17 Dome-Judd—were not classified as they didn’t complete the mandatory 70 percent of the winner’s distance.
Next: The Full Results
| 80th Le Mans 24 Hours | ||||||
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| # | class | car | team | laps | gap |
| 1 | 1 | P1 | Audi R18 e-tron quattro | Audi Sport Team Joest | 378 |
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| 2 | 2 | P1 | Audi R18 e-tron quattro | Audi Sport Team Joest | 377 | 1 lap |
| 3 | 4 | P1 | Audi R18 Ultra | Audi Sport North America | 375 | 3 laps |
| 4 | 12 | P1 | Lola B12/60 Coupe-Toyota | Rebellion Racing | 367 | 11 laps |
| 5 | 3 | P1 | Audi R18 Ultra | Audi Sport Team Joest | 366 | 12 laps |
| 6 | 22 | P1 | HPD ARX 03a-Honda | JRM | 357 | 21 laps |
| 7 | 44 | P2 | HPD ARX 03b-Honda | Starworks Motorsport | 354 | 24 laps |
| 8 | 46 | P2 | Oreca 03-Nissan | Thiriet by TDS Racing | 353 | 25 laps |
| 9 | 49 | P2 | Oreca 03-Nissan | Pecom Racing | 352 | 26 laps |
| 10 | 26 | P2 | Oreca 03-Nissan | Signatech Nissan | 351 | 27 laps |
| 11 | 13 | P1 | Lola B12/60 Coupe-Toyota | Rebellion Racing | 350 | 28 laps |
| 12 | 41 | P2 | Zytek Z11SN-Nissan | Greaves Motorsport | 348 | 30 laps |
| 13 | 25 | P2 | Oreca 03-Nissan | ADR-Delta | 346 | 32 laps |
| 14 | 35 | P2 | Morgan-Nissan | Oak Racing | 341 | 37 laps |
| 15 | 42 | P2 | Zytek Z11SN-Nissan | Greaves Motorsport | 340 | 38 laps |
| 16 | 23 | P2 | Oreca 03-Nissan | Signatech Nissan | 340 | 2:47.469 |
| 17 | 51 | GTE Pro | Ferrari 458 Italia | AF Corse | 336 | 42 laps |
| 18 | 59 | GTE Pro | Ferrari 458 Italia | Luxury Racing | 333 | 45 laps |
| 19 | 97 | GTE Pro | aston martin vantage v8 | Aston Martin Racing | 332 | 46 laps |
| 20 | 50 | GTE Am | Chevrolet Corvette C6 ZR1 | Larbre Competition | 329 | 49 laps |
| 21 | 67 | GTE AM | Porsche 911 RSR (997) | IMSA Performance Matmut | 328 | 50 laps |
| 22 | 71 | GTE Pro | Ferrari 458 Italia | AF Corse | 326 | 52 laps |
| 23 | 73 | GTE Pro | Chevrolet Corvette C6 ZR1 | Corvette Racing | 326 | 3:10.910 |
| 24 | 45 | P2 | Oreca 03-Nissan | Boutsen Ginion Racing | 325 | 53 laps |
| 25 | 57 | GTE Am | Ferrari 458 Italia | Krohn Racing | 323 | 55 laps |
| 26 | 40 | P2 | Oreca 03-Judd | Race Performance | 320 | 58 laps |
| 27 | 79 | GTE Am | Porsche 911 RSR (997) | Flying Lizard Motorsports | 313 | 65 laps |
| 28 | 70 | GTE Am | Chevrolet Corvette C6 ZR1 | Larbre Competition | 309 | 69 laps |
| 29 | 43 | P2 | Norma MP 2000-Judd | Extreme Limite Aric | 308 | 70 laps |
| 30 | 21 | P1 | HPD ARX 03a-Honda | Strakka Racing | 303 | 75 laps |
| 31 | 61 | GTE Am | Ferrari 458 Italia | AF Corse-Waltrip | 294 | 84 laps |
| 32 | 83 | GTE Am | Ferrari 458 Italia | JMB Racing | 292 | 86 laps |
| 33 | 55 | GTE Am | Porsche 911 RSR (997) | JWA-Avila | 290 | 88 laps |
| 34 | 74 | GTE Pro | Chevrolet Corvette C6 ZR1 | Corvette Racing | 215 | 163 laps |
| 35 | 17 | P1 | Dome Judd | Pescarolo Team | 203 | 175 laps |
| 36 | 38 | P2 | Zytek Z11SN-Nissan | Jota | 271 | 107 laps |
| 37 | 33 | P2 | HPD ARX 03b-Honda | Level 5 Motorsports | 240 | 138 laps |
| 38 | 30 | P2 | Lola Judd | Status Grand Prix | 239 | 139 laps |
| 39 | 88 | GTE Am | Porsche 911 RSR (997) | Team Felbermayr-Proton | 222 | 156 laps |
| 40 | 15 | P1 | Oak Pescarolo-Judd | Oak Racing | 219 | 159 laps |
| 41 | 66 | GTE Pro | Ferrari 458 Italia | JMW Racing | 204 | 174 laps |
| 42 | 48 | P2 | Oreca 03-Nissan | Murphy Prototypes | 196 | 182 laps |
| 43 | 77 | GTE Pro | Porsche 911 RSR (997) | Team Felbermayr-Proton | 184 | 194 laps |
| 44 | 75 | GTE Am | Porsche 911 RSR (997) | Prospeed Competition | 180 | 198 laps |
| 45 | 31 | P2 | Lola B12/80 Coupe-Lotus | Lotus | 155 | 223 laps |
| 46 | 58 | GTE Am | Ferrari 458 Italia | Luxury Racing | 146 | 232 laps |
| 47 | 24 | P2 | Morgan-Judd | Oak Racing | 139 | 239 laps |
| 48 | 7 | P1 | Toyota TS030 Hybrid | Toyota Racing | 134 | 244 laps |
| 49 | 80 | GTE Pro | Porsche 911 RSR (997) | Flying Lizard Motorsports | 114 | 264 laps |
| 50 | 28 | P2 | Lola B12/80 Coupe-Nissan | Gulf Racing Middle East | 92 | 286 laps |
| 51 | 8 | P1 | Toyota TS030 Hybrid | Toyota Racing | 82 | 296 laps |
| 52 | 0 | New Tech | Delta Wing Nissan | Highcroft Racing | 75 | 303 laps |
| 53 | 81 | GTE Am | Ferrari 458 Italia | AF Corse | 70 | 308 laps |
| 54 | 99 | GTE Am | Aston Martin Vantage V8 | Aston Martin Racing | 31 | 347 laps |
| 55 | 16 | P1 | Pescarolo 03-Judd | Pescarolo Team | 20 | 358 laps |
| 56 | 29 | P2 | Lola B12/80 Coupe-Nissan | Gulf Racing Middle East | 17 | 361 laps |
