Here, car by car, is my form guide for LMP1 heading into the weekend’s 24-hour enduro.
#1 Audi R18 e-tron quattro – Audi Sport Team Joest: Defending winners of the 24 Hours of Le Mans and the World Endurance Championship. Lead driver Tom Kristensen is shooting for his tenth overall victory at Le Mans. Loic Duval crashed the #1 hard in practice on Thursday, and has been ruled unfit to race by medical personnel. Former Peugeot factory driver Marc Gene replaces Duval. Nonetheless, a strong driver combination. Will be relying on better reliability than faster cars around it.
#2 Audi R18 e-tron quattro – Audi Sport Team Joest: This is the car that most pundits think will, barring unforeseen circumstances, be at the pointy end on Sunday afternoon. The combination of Andre Lotterer, Marcel Fassler and Benoit Treluyer have won Le Mans twice before, in 2011 and 2012, and are, in terms of chemistry, the most veteran line-up in the Audi camp. Hard to go past them.
#3 Audi R18 e-tron quattro – Audi Sport Team Joest: The trio of Filipe Albuquerque, Marco Bonanomi and Oliver Jarvis are something of the forgotten group in the Audi stable. That makes them the underdog. Could surprise, like the then-underdog group of Fassler, Lotterer and Treluyer did three years ago. Any Audi entry has to be taken seriously.
#7 Toyota TS 040-Hybrid – Toyota Racing: Alexander Wurz, Stephane Sarrazin and Kazuki Nakajima have played second fiddle to their team-mates in the #8 through two rounds of the World Endurance Championship. The key for both Toyota entries is whether their pace matches their reliability. Whether their giant hybrid system will last twenty-four hours is the big question.
#8 Toyota TS 040-Hybrid – Toyota Racing: Winners of the Six Hours of Silverstone and the Six Hours of Spa-Francorchamps this year and fastest in the Le Mans Test Day two weekends ago, Anthony Davidson, Nicolas Lapierre and Sebastien Buemi are Toyota’s best hope at beating Audi and Porsche. Davidson is a solid driver, and he’s gaining a reputation for being a serious tearaway. Him against, say, Kristensen in the last few hours would be a mighty duel. As I wrote above, mechanical reliability is the key. Can Toyota survive? If so, watch out, because they’ve proven they’re fast as anything else on the track.
#14 Porsche 919 Hybrid – Porsche Team: As far as Australia is concerned, the “other” Porsche in the race, but the trio of Romain Dumas, Neel Jani and Marc Lieb are far from slouches. The way Porsche have set up their car, with a big hybrid energy package and a small engine, doesn’t exactly lend itself to long-term success. If they can survive, watch out for Dumas. A long-time Porsche prototype driver, and one of the fastest guys in the world.
#20 Porsche 919 Hybrid – Porsche Team: A nice ANZAC alliance here, with Australia’s Mark Webber and New Zealand’s Brendon Hartley alongside German Timo Bernhard. Believed to be the stronger of the two Porsche efforts, this is a trio who could figure for at least a podium, if their car survives, because you’ve got three guns behind the wheel. As for Webber, I would imagine he might call it a successful weekend if he manages to go through practice, qualifying and the race without getting airborne.
[In the companion LMP1-L category, for privateers running cars without hybrid packages, there are two Toyota R-One coupe cars run by Rebellion Racing and an intriguing Nissan Zeod RC prototype, similar to the radical Delta Wing, running at the back of the LMP1 class, the 56th garage spot given to experimental technology entries, but will not challenge for the overall victory]
Join me at The Roar for live coverage of the opening and closing stages of the 2014 24 Hours of Le Mans, beginning with pre-race activities from 10.30pm AEST Saturday night.
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