Like so many times before...Audi finished 1-2 at the 82nd running of the 24 Hours of Le Mans, but had you turned on the television to watch just the last sixty or ninety minutes of the twice-around-the-clock endurance classic from France and saw the two Audi R18 e-tron quattro prototypes cross the line in a nice, neat formation, you could be forgiven for thinking that the powerhouse German squad had romped to victory once more, lucky thirteen for Dr Wolfgang Ulrich’s team.
Instead, the true story of the race was less of Audi’s dominance – they only really dominated the last few hours – and more about the challengers to that fabled squad’s chokehold dominance on the 24 Hours of Le Mans. It was never easy for Audi, not even in the last hour of the tension-filled race, not with mysterious electrical ailments, accidents, thunderstorms and more. We say it every year: Le Mans had everything. This year, it really did.
For a time, it seemed that Toyota, in their second season at Le Mans, would storm to victory. The #7 TS 040 Hybrid could do no wrong in the early going. Then, disaster struck, the pole-sitting car succumbing to mechanical gremlins, coming to a stop on the racetrack with little warning that anything was wrong. This was the car that had led for most of the day, and seemed set to deliver Toyota it’s first victory at Le Mans, and only the second for a manufacturer based in Asia.
As so often happens at Le Mans, a good effort that could have turned easily into a race-winning effort went up in smoke. Toyota were clearly heart-broken. Earlier, the #8 had crashed during a thunderstorm in the race’s early stages, and was scarcely a factor after that.
Benefitting from Toyota’s misfortune was the #1 Audi, defending champions, who had been through so much in the lead-up to race day, with Mr Le Mans, the Dane Tom Kristensen shooting for his tenth overall victory.
In the end, Andre Lotterer, Marcel Fassler and Benoit Treluyer became three-time winners at Le Mans—notching their third overall win in four years—following the demise of the #7 Toyota, #20 Porsche and, crucially, their sister car, the #1 Audi with Kristensen aboard, those three pacesetters falling from the lead in succession, each incident more dramatic than the one before.
For Australian fans, and for the giant contingent of Porsche fans the world over, the retirement of the #20 Porsche after it stopped on track with Webber behind the wheel and in second place, is the bitterest pill of them all. So close yet so far for the German squad, making their prototype return to Le Mans. It is often said that you need a year under your belt before challenging for overall victory at the Circuit de la Sarthe, but Porsche very nearly made a mockery of that, and of suggestions they would be unlikely to see the race’s halfway point.
Webber, along with Timo Bernhard and young Kiwi Brendon Hartley, very nearly delivered the sort of victory that would have ensured their ever-lasting presence in the Le Mans history books. They deserved more than an electrical gremlin shuttering their garage and their chance at a win, with only about two hours left.
The #2 had the same problems as the #1, both cars stopping to change their turbochargers, but it was thanks to an incredible rebound drive from Andre Lotterer, a quintuple stint through the late morning and into the afternoon as he chased down the #20 Porsche who had inherited the lead after successive Audi issues. Surely, Lotterer’s effort will be remembered in the annals of Le Mans.
It was a powerful, stunning drive, and the #2 Audi had speed to burn. So much so that Mark Webber told Eurosport that he didn’t think the Porsche had enough legs to hold back Lotterer, who was coming on like a bull at a gate. Those in the know aren’t surprised by Lotterer’s efforts. He’s got a big future in store for him at Audi. This win, because it came after so many trials and tribulations, will perhaps be the sweetest of all for Audi. Down on top-end speed compared to Toyota and Porsche, this was a win in which they showed incredible resilience.
In LMP2, we saw a surprise winner: the #38 Jota Sport Zytek-Nissan won, with the driver trio of Simon Dolan, Harry Ticknell and Oliver Turvey surviving late-race drama. Turvery is the man who stepped in late, covering for Marc Gene, who went to LMP1 to take Loic Duval’s spot in the #1 Audi, after the Thursday crash that ruled Duval out. From the couch to Le Mans victory lane in three days – amazing!
GTE-PRO was another fierce battleground, but the #51 AF Corse Ferrari 458 Italia of Giancarlo Fisichella, Gianmaria Bruni and Toni Vilander triumphed as the dominant #97 Aston Martin experienced late trouble, and despite a heavy push from the #73 Chevrolet Corvette.
Aston Martin found redemption in GTE-AM, with the all-Danish team of Kristian Poulsen, David Heinemeier Hansson, and Nicki Thiim handing out a motor racing lesson. They led more than half the race and, despite a late-race trip to the garage, finished a lap clear of their nearest competitors. A year after losing Denmark’s Alan Simonsen in a crash at the start of the race, the huge Danish contingent around the racetrack enjoyed an emotional win.
So often this race turns on a spectacle on a grand scale, but there have been few Le Mans editions as gut-wrenching and exciting as this, with the hopes of teams and drivers rising so high and crashing so hard. It’s incredible that at the end of a day’s worth of racing, we still witnessed battles well into the final hour. With the emergence of Toyota and Porsche and the great battles in LMP2 and GTE-Pro classes, you can only wonder at what we might see in a year’s time.
And so we close the book on the 2014 edition of the greatest endurance race in the world. Simply put, there’s no other race quite like the French classic, the sternest test of man and racing machinery.
It’s not a stretch to say that the 2014 running of the 24 Heures Du Mans will be remembered as one of the greatest.
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