Le Mans 24 hours 2008

[RacingManiac]

not here: http://www.mulsannescorner.com/peugeot908-4.html

or here?: http://www.mulsannescorner.com/peugeot908-3.html

maybe the pic here are before they added it for the Le Mans trim....

[WhiteBlue]

Kristensen almost gave me a heart attack when he had this collision. I reckon he will give up his ride to Allan Mc Nish for the final hour. It is quite tight now with a gap of 1 lap and 1.5 hours to drive.

and now Minassian spins without crashing. equal good luck for both.

[WhiteBlue]

well done Audi, Tom Kristensen, Allan Mc Nish and Dindo Capello congrats
what a race!!!
sorry for the Peugeot drivers. they did not have the car for the rain. but also very well done!!

[joseff]

The #7 Peugeot spent 41 minutes vs 31 mins for the #2 Audi. IMHO McNish's laps in the night sealed the win. Awesome.

[WhiteBlue]

also well done to Shell. they provided synthetic diesel made from biogas. certainly a fuel of the future. =D> =D> =D>

[Steven]

What a pity, I so much would have loved to see Villeneuve win it.

I had a bit of worries during the night when Jacques had trouble with his pace, but it was apparently an order from the team to back off a bit as they were suffering overheating on the brakes. Despite good drivers, I was still stunned how much quicker #8 was compared to #7.

Ah well, better next time I hope. I'm looking forward to see how the teams will implement KERS into their cars. I think Peugeot need to concentrate mainly on two areas, being KERS to reduce fuel consumption and probably try to run 3 stints with one set of tyres like the Audis did sometimes. I'm not sure if the latter is possible since the Peugeot engine appears to be stronger than the Audi, hence pushing the tyres more.

[RacingManiac]

The #7 Peugeot spent 41 minutes vs 31 mins for the #2 Audi.

Interestingly if the race had been dry Peugeot might just get away with that deficit on speed alone....having 4-5 sec a lap is incredibly handy. Couple with that and the lack of proper preparation for wet and various pitstop and suspected reliability issue really came back to haunt them when they try to catch the Audi. When the car is finally sorted to run the #2 down its one lap short per tank made it pit earlier every time....

Audi out preped Peugeot big time, big enough to make up the incredible speed deficit the car have on pure pace....

[joseff]

I'm not sure if the latter is possible since the Peugeot engine appears to be stronger than the Audi, hence pushing the tyres more.

They have trouble putting power down. The Audis were on rails coming out of corners, the Peugeots fishtailed out of every corner be it slow, medium or fast.

[Miguel]

Hi guys,

I've seen an awful lot of the race, although I see not as much as some folks over here. In any case, congrats to Audi #2 for a superb performance to beat the Peugeots (and this pissed me off a lot).

Anyway, as I'm a newbie in this endurance racing thingie, can anybody explain me how could Audi #2 beat the Peugeots? I mean, I see that the Peugeot #7 was probably the slowest, and that it spent 10 minutes more than the Audi in the pit but, I find it hard to see that you can bet other good professionals in strategy only, with a 3s a lap slower car. I mean, if the Audis really beat Peugeot because they could do stints 1 lap longer somebody in peugeot would have realised this, wouldn't they? It's not like they had the reliability issues of last year.

In any case, it's been a heck of a race, interesting from the first turn "taint-pass" of McNish to the very last hour. The attendance was a fabulous 258500 people! Wow.

[WhiteBlue]

It really came down to rain. Had it stayed dry Peugeot had won the race. The Audi had a better set up and one has to say the more experienced drivers. Villeneuve wasn't the fastest Peugeot driver by a big margin. It would have been neat for him to win this because the unique combination of Monaco, Indianapolis and Le Mans but it would have been unfair in terms of relative performance. McNish and Kristensen at times were absolutely superb and Capello also did a good job. I'm glad nothing bad happened in terms of safety. There were some scary things happening. At one time one of the Peugeots was driving with zero visibility because the windshield was completely covered in oil. The relative speed differentials over the other cars was frightening and the high speed accidents of the training and Monza were really a scare. Lets not forget they have one guy out of action with vertebra fractures for 6 months. To have race laps under 3:20 (3:19.394) was amazing. They surely need to do something. Other than that one of the most thrilling races I have ever seen. I have been glued to the screen. Next year Audi will come back again and hopefully with a new car. I can't wait.

[RacingManiac]

What I guess as the reasons for Peugeot's loss are the following:

Overly biased dry setup: We know the Peugeot is fast, in fact it was as fast as it ran in qualifying for the #7 car and the #8 got within a second of its qualifying lap. The problem is that like F1 cars now the car have a narrow operating window when the setup works perfect. And anything deviates from that the car gets difficult to drive. Audi said it on qualifying day that did not made a qualifying setup, everything was geared towards the 24 hours. And from experience they know it never is going to stay ideal for the whole race. So their setup in compromised for those condition that isn't going to be perfect. And when the condition turned bad in the middle of the night, a 30 sec lead went to nothing in 2 lapsfor the #7 car.

What also seems to me is that Peugeot did not prepare for all the condtion. It took them a while to get the car running on the wet pace of the Audi, basically experimenting across 3 cars for the right setup change. Whereas Audi again from experience have something to draw on. This lost them time on track, where its the only place they can gain on the Audi(as they are getting destroyed in the pit).

Preparation also made a huge difference IMO. Simple stuff like the headlight, #9 car got a call early on for having one light not working. Look at Audi's light, it runs 4 lights to Peugeot's 2. #2 Audi had one light gone out in the car, but it still have 3 more lights and at least one on each side of the car, which simply complies with the rule. And then the design of the cooling, where the Peugeot were worried about the temp as debris seems to affect that quite often. The speculation is that the car's cooling has much less leeway in allowing for situation like that due to the tight aero packaging of the car. And then there are the spares. You never see Audi assembling spare parts to put on the car at the next stop, because they are done probably on Tuesday. Peugeot had to assemble spare wing, whether its for setup change or actually replacing the unit due to damage. IMO that's laughable thing if you want to compete at Audi's level....

Lastly and most definitely not the least, the drivers. McNish, Tom K, and Dindo all drove pretty much flawless race. They were on the pace as soon as they are out, regardless of the condition. Kept the nose cleaned, and ran just robotically consistent laptimes lap after lap. Peugeot is faster, but not all the time, and to make up for the time lost due to silly aforementioned reasons, they need to be faster ALL THE TIME. And they simply didn't deliver. The first 10 hours when it was dry you can see their pure speed made a difference, but when curve ball were thrown by weather and minute car issues, the variance in speed made the Audi take over the race and held it there....

[Miguel]

Cheers! Great post, by the way, RacingManiac. I missed the night action, and it seems races are decided there. I didn't know about the light issues, it looks indeed like a silly issue to have.

WhiteBlue, the Eurosport commentators were talking about laptimes on the last hours. The commenting woman made the point that the ACO is thinking on limiting whatever so that laptimes will go back to 3:30. They also said that Franck Montagny made a stint basically on 21's, which is monstruous with all the traffic.

[WhiteBlue]

Yes, I know they will do something about the diesels. probably reduce the restrictors further.

I also thought something was wrong with my Villeneuve triple claim. I checked and found he never won Monaco. He was F1 WDC but Monaco always escaped him.

In 1997 when he had a dominant car Williams screwed the tyre choice and he later crashed and retired. Michael used his spare car to make two exploration laps and decided to take a wet biased set up. He went on to win the race.


Nevertheless Indy champion, F1 and Le Mans would have made Jacques only the second man to have achieved that. He will come back for that I guess.

[joseff]

Btw it's offtopic but did anyone have a good listen to Tom Kristensen's interview? What was he going on about doing some spanking?

[Steven]

Nevertheless Indy champion, F1 and Le Mans would have made Jacques only the second man to have achieved that. He will come back for that I guess.

In fact he would be the first to also have won the Indianapolis 500 I think

All in all, I'd say Jacques drove well. From what I have seen it's true his first lap out is always a bit sluggish, but he's got enough time to work on that. At least he drove without errors, while Klien cost #9 two laps while Lamy put #8 down almost half a lap late in the race (although it didn't matter much for them).