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Relive the 2010 24 Hours of Le Mans, a true endurance classic that tested every limit of man and machine. Audi and Peugeot went head-to-head in a relentless battle for supremacy, with strategy, reliability, and pure speed deciding the outcome. From breathtaking night stints to heart-pounding final hours, this race captured the raw essence of Le Mans and delivered moments that would define a new era of endurance racing.

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Sports
Transcript
00:00:00Lamborghini Owners Club Murcielago is still going. This year's car clearly then a very much more
00:00:07fettled version of the Murcielago than they had last year. This is a brand new car provided by
00:00:12Ryter Engineering who are Lamborghini's development team and so far barring one puncture they seem to
00:00:19have been almost entirely trouble free. So there you go. Now do get it refired and away it goes
00:00:27and I have to say even in terms of relatively short GT races for Lamborghini's it is having a very good
00:00:34run so far. Hello everybody just under 14 hours of the race remain and we are now properly into the
00:00:44darkness hours here at Le Mans after a very wet morning it has taken a while to clear and we have
00:00:51now got a cool and clear night. It's been dry right from the start after a wet morning warm-up
00:00:58and conditions now really ideal for fast lapering that's borne out by Nicolas Lapierre in the number
00:01:05four Orica Peugeot which is just about to come in for a pit stop. He's just turned the lap in three
00:01:12minutes 26 which is a pretty reasonable race pace. He's got another half a dozen cars around him doing
00:01:19similar and Davidson three minutes 24 in the last lap. Looking here at the Porsche which Timo Scheider is
00:01:27taking over or handing over at the moment. He shares with Marco Holzer and Richard Westbrook and we were talking to
00:01:32Richard Westbrook a little bit earlier. Very disappointed with the new race engine they fitted to this car.
00:01:37It apparently is flatter than a flat thing on flat day. So it's got no torque whatsoever. They've been consistently
00:01:47backing off wing on the car and trying to give away grip in the hope that it might drag itself off a corner.
00:01:53But unfortunately it seems to be an awful lot less impressive than the race they the engine they had in for qualifying.
00:01:59Unfortunately occasionally that's the way it goes. I'm joined in the booth now by Chris Parsons and Neville Haye.
00:02:05So first of all good evening gentlemen. Good evening Martin. Good evening Martin. Very nicely done. Well done together.
00:02:12Roman Belleville steps out of the Saline which if we catch up on our GT1 positions is currently
00:02:19Oh I've lost third one. First in GT1. They're scattered so liberally down page two at the timing screen.
00:02:27Yes I can see it now. There's not a burly bloke in the way. That one green light signifies he is in first position.
00:02:34And there'll be two red lights on the side of this car because this is not the Saline. This is now our second place car.
00:02:40The Oreca Peugeot of Nicolas Lapierre. And after Peugeot started so dominantly with cars running one, two, three and four.
00:02:49They have lost car number three courtesy of a rare suspension failure. And car number one with a serious delay due to some electrical gremlin.
00:02:57Bless you Jeremy Shaw in the background. So gentlemen what looked like being a very long and painful 23 and a half hours waiting for Peugeot's axe to fall.
00:03:08And to have a one, two, three, four finish suddenly seems to have turned into a much more edifying prospect.
00:03:15Yes the whole thing seems really very open. Although the weather which was the one factor that we thought would be the limiting factor here looks fairly set now for the rest of the race.
00:03:30Although it is quite cold outside and the wind is blowing from the north. Which means that it could blow the rain back. But I believe for the next two hours at least things are set.
00:03:42Although towards dawn there might be some rain which will upset things again.
00:03:49That's the sort of prognostication that over the last couple of days we have heard accompanied by a collapse of thunder.
00:03:54There will be no more rain for the rest of the evening. Quick let's fly from the lightning.
00:04:00Nothing they say convinces me about the weather here. All the years I've been coming to Le Mans and I've been told oh it's going to be scrolling hot and it rains.
00:04:09Oh it's going to rain and it's hot. It just is a little bit of a lottery but they do say you know that's an old story about Dame David all the fat lady sings.
00:04:19And I've got a feeling that this race it had a sting at the start and I think it might have a sting in the tail somewhere along the line.
00:04:25I don't know why I think that but I've had this feeling all the way along the line.
00:04:28Well there's always lots of twists and turns and there have certainly been quite a few so far and not just in the front running LMP1 category either.
00:04:35Here's our erstwhile GT1 leader for instance the Matec Ford which looked pretty rock solid in the GT1 class.
00:04:42Of course involved in the accident that brought out the safety car that is currently third in class but has been on pit road for a very long while.
00:04:50It's completed 129 laps to the leaders 138. So that's a very long way to try and catch up on pace.
00:04:59That ain't going to happen even in 13 hours and 50 minutes.
00:05:02No.
00:05:03They're going to have to wait for something else to break on somebody else's car.
00:05:06And as you can see still trying to chop bits out of inner wheel arch liners to get the body work to go back on.
00:05:12And at 200 miles an hour actually you do quite need it to fit. That's rather important.
00:05:17You don't need your body work flying off at those sort of speeds.
00:05:20You don't miss it.
00:05:24Sorry I didn't mean to make that quite so camp.
00:05:27Inner pits is the WR which is climbing slowly up the order now knocking on the door of the top 30.
00:05:3431st place for Stefan Cellini as he jumps out and gurns the camera.
00:05:39And not an auspiciously quick car but it seems much against the run of form with Cellini's.
00:05:47We're sort of echoing the Japanese Lamborghini program here.
00:05:50Seems to be keeping itself pretty much out of harm's way.
00:05:53And that is rule number one at Le Mans.
00:05:56Stay out of the pits because you go a lot quicker when you're going on the track.
00:05:59Talking of that Martin, the car that's really surprised me today is the HPD, the Stracker car of Danny Watts.
00:06:12Which really has had a very clean run.
00:06:15Everyone thought that the Franchitti car would be the leader of that class, the Franchitti Brabham car.
00:06:25But no, the Danny Watts Stracker car has had a very clean run and doing very well.
00:06:31They have, what, three laps?
00:06:34Yeah, and they're two cars that really are the class of their respective fields.
00:06:37The Stracker team have been very much the class of the LMS this year in the LMP2.
00:06:43And the Highcroft team which Marino Franchitti has joined for the long distance races as a driver rather than just as a member of the crew.
00:06:51That's been very much the LMP2 class leader in the American Le Mans series.
00:06:55So, it is sort of the clash of the two titans.
00:06:58And the Cura chassis is definitely a new generation of LMP2 car.
00:07:03It seems to be just a step ahead of the load of chassis.
00:07:07In third place, in fact, is Olivier Pla.
00:07:10In the fourth place is Olivier Pla in the Gennetta Zytek, the number 40 keeper ASM car.
00:07:18But the Pescarolo judge of Guillaume Moreau, currently the young French driver car in the Oat Racing organisation,
00:07:27Mathieu Lahaye joining him in Chancherouz.
00:07:29Not that French, the Czech.
00:07:30But mainly young French drivers.
00:07:33That is currently lying third in class.
00:07:35But it is a battle, basically, between the Acuras to see who blinks.
00:07:38The GT1 Ford leaves the pit lane as John Cleland settles down in his armchair with a large glass of Armagnac.
00:07:47Do you want to hit him, Neville, or shall I?
00:07:49Well, I think, basically, the least he could have done was give us a bottle.
00:07:53Cleland, give someone a bottle.
00:07:55Yes, I know.
00:07:56I think that's very unlikely.
00:07:57Very unlikely.
00:07:58In is the 11th place, Lola Aston Martin.
00:08:00This is a double-A car.
00:08:02Vanina Ix is at the wheel at the moment.
00:08:04And this is one of the three Lola Aston Martins, of course.
00:08:08Pierre Rag, Vanina Ix, and Frank Meyer driving this car.
00:08:11They're in 11th.
00:08:12The other two cars, the golf-colored cars of the Aston Martin racing team, 007, 009.
00:08:18They are 7th and 8th.
00:08:19Adrian Fernandez and Sam Hancock, respectively, at the helm of those cars.
00:08:24We're going to take a quick commercial break.
00:08:26And be back in just a second with more live coverage here from Le Mans.
00:08:41Welcome back live to Le Mans.
00:08:42You could only be in one place, couldn't you?
00:08:44Lights on, it's night, and there's the Dunlop Bridge.
00:08:47World's greatest endurance motor race continues.
00:08:49Looking here at our LMP2 class leader, rather.
00:08:53In fact, that's not.
00:08:54That's the key players M car that lies in 4th place in the car,
00:08:57which is the class led by the number 42 Strakka Racing HPD engine Acura chassis.
00:09:06Acura in 2nd place as well with the HPD engine in number 26 Highcroft car.
00:09:11That's the green and black machine.
00:09:123rd place in the class, as we said, Lola Judd of Guillaume Moreau.
00:09:15And gentlemen, you can see the mechanics now starting to feel the pace
00:09:18of having been up at probably 6ish this morning to get into the track,
00:09:23ready for 9 o'clock morning warm-up.
00:09:25The 24 hours of Le Mans, of course, is about a 40-hour shift, really, isn't it?
00:09:30It's the catnap club.
00:09:32And walking through the paddock on my way up to the tower,
00:09:36my God, there are some very, very tired faces already.
00:09:40Tired and emotional or just tired?
00:09:42No, just tired in the paddock.
00:09:44They're emotional outside.
00:09:45Yeah, there's emotions outside running fairly high.
00:09:47The odd thing about this race is that there isn't anything like it anywhere.
00:09:52The Moreau at night, as I was saying earlier on, an hour or so ago,
00:09:55it is just special.
00:09:56But the thing that I find even more daunting is that now there is quite a lot of this circuit
00:10:02that is quite well lit, not just the pit area.
00:10:05And then you go out here and onto the Moreau and what have you.
00:10:09And it is very, very dark.
00:10:11Don't let those pictures fool you.
00:10:13It's a lot darker than that if you're sitting in a car driving it down here
00:10:15a couple of hundred miles an hour, I'll tell you.
00:10:17It's a couple of hours ago, I tried to get down to our Nash at the other end of the circuit.
00:10:21And it's absolutely impossible.
00:10:23There are so many cars, buses, people walking, bikes, motorbikes, everything.
00:10:30There are just thousands and thousands of people here.
00:10:35The night is the great thing here.
00:10:37I mean, I can remember as a youth sort of coming here,
00:10:41and also taking my boys here as well,
00:10:44and going out on the Mall Saan, you know,
00:10:46it's just the most unbelievable feeling.
00:10:48You could move around a lot of these here on Thursdays.
00:10:51Well, that's why there are so many thousands of people jamming the roads with their cars
00:10:55and their buses and their bicycles and scooters and everything trying to get out there,
00:10:59because it is the one race in Europe, really, that has anything like this.
00:11:03I mean, we'd argue that there's nowhere quite like this in the world.
00:11:07Daytona obviously has a lot more night in it.
00:11:09It's 24 hours, Sebring goes into the dust,
00:11:11but Le Mans really is unique in that aspect.
00:11:15It doesn't have the longest night, but it is a dark night.
00:11:18And particularly out there in the forest,
00:11:20we're talking the Mulsanne Strait, we're talking our Nash in Indianapolis,
00:11:23where we're racing up towards now at really very high speeds.
00:11:27The Peugeot right up behind the Highcroft Acura,
00:11:30and making it look like it's standing still as they rush up towards Indianapolis,
00:11:35over the kink where the Mercedes flew all those years ago, repeated dump wreck on board.
00:11:39And at 220 miles an hour,
00:11:41stabbing the brakes, turning into Indianapolis,
00:11:43down here into the second part of Indianapolis,
00:11:45probably doing little over 100 kilometres an hour.
00:11:48And then one of the more difficult corners, even though it's the slowest,
00:11:51because you always feel that the squirt up to our Nash,
00:11:54you need to carry a bit more speed.
00:11:56But the braking is so important there,
00:11:58you can just skate off the track within a heartbeat.
00:12:00And then heading down again on public roads,
00:12:03you can see the dotted lines in the middle.
00:12:05Now the curbstones at the side, the mile markers,
00:12:09and the trees have all been moved back a little bit.
00:12:11But to a Bentley boy from the 1920s,
00:12:14to a Jaguar driver from the 1950s,
00:12:16to Steve McQueen in the 1970s,
00:12:19that view, Neville, has remained pretty much unchanged.
00:12:23Yeah, totally recognisable.
00:12:25Funny enough, I went out on Friday night for a meal,
00:12:29and I went down towards White House,
00:12:31and I was explaining to the guy who was going for me,
00:12:33do you realise that this is where the circuit used to be?
00:12:36You can still see the safety bank as such,
00:12:38and you see where White House is.
00:12:40And I said, this is where, in 1927,
00:12:42the Bentley team all involved in this.
00:12:44And then ten years later, there was another accident there.
00:12:48We've sadly cost the life of a South African driver, Pat Fairfield,
00:12:53and that was the scene of very, very many
00:12:55of the difficulties that arose over the years.
00:12:57They changed it, and of course they changed with the full chicane.
00:13:01It became an awful lot safer in this particular part of the circuit.
00:13:05At the same time up there,
00:13:07I was here when John Wolfe was killed in the first of the 917s,
00:13:14and after that, and the width of the circuit there,
00:13:17is so narrow, and as you say, there are ditches either side,
00:13:22and banks and houses.
00:13:24It's quite incredible.
00:13:26No safety factors whatsoever.
00:13:29Now, I mean, if you look now at these cars,
00:13:32yes, we know that cornering forces and everything are that much greater,
00:13:36but when you think of the thousands and thousands of miles that drivers have put onto these circuits,
00:13:43with the Jaguar team, with the Aston Martin team,
00:13:46and some of the things that sort of amused me is that, you know,
00:13:50when we had Archie Hamilton out today in the Porsche race,
00:13:55in that C-Type Jaguar, which the Hamilton family still own that they won the race with,
00:14:02is the orange.
00:14:04Because Gunga always had oranges in the car,
00:14:07and there is one of the oranges in that car.
00:14:11It's still in the car to this day.
00:14:14If any of you have not read the Duncan Hamilton book Touchwood,
00:14:19you really ought to.
00:14:20It's one of the funniest books about motor racing.
00:14:23Some of its exploits were just tremendous.
00:14:26He did have some very amusing times, I think is the nice way of putting it.
00:14:30Yes.
00:14:31Another book that I've just read, which is well worth reading,
00:14:35is called Go Like Hell,
00:14:38which is the story of the Ford-Ferrari battles in the 60s and 70s.
00:14:45And we see the GT40s, or the Fords here today, the Ford GTs,
00:14:51but it was the GT40s and the Ferraris in those days.
00:14:56And it's an excellent book building up about the battle between the two companies.
00:15:03Well, it really came about, of course, because at the time,
00:15:07Ferrari was undoubtedly very successful in Grand Prix cars and in sports cars
00:15:16and everything else as well.
00:15:18For a reason best known to himself,
00:15:21Henry Ford decided he wanted to buy it.
00:15:24And it didn't happen.
00:15:26And I think there was a little bit of spite,
00:15:28and the one, if you can do it, I can do it, came into it.
00:15:30And the Ford Motor Company,
00:15:32everything went quiet for a little while.
00:15:34And then Eric Broadley, that self-same Eric Broadley who headed up Lola
00:15:38and the cars, we see Lola cars out here today,
00:15:41designed the car, which was actually at Le Mans in 1963.
00:15:47There were two of them here.
00:15:49And these cars made a huge impression upon Ford.
00:15:53And so basically what happened is they bought the design.
00:15:57And at this point in time, as I thought was the amusing thing,
00:16:00we watched actually two very, very interesting little battles going on there.
00:16:05And just break away from that for a moment too.
00:16:10That's the recovering audio of Christophe Boucher,
00:16:12one of the two Coles cars.
00:16:14Now that was up well up into the top ten
00:16:16and is now slumped down into 14th place,
00:16:19just coming out of the pits.
00:16:21And in the pits at the moment is our race leader.
00:16:25So Stefan Sarrazan receiving service stays in.
00:16:29Sarrazan of course very disappointed,
00:16:31disgruntled to lose a chance to claim a fourth consecutive pole,
00:16:36but he started from pole three times for Peugeot
00:16:40and has yet to win a race.
00:16:41Didn't start from pole this year, but is leading the race.
00:16:45So I guess perhaps you'd give up those Thursday and Friday headlines
00:16:49if you got the Monday morning headlines
00:16:51and the chance to take that trophy home with you.
00:16:55Dead tip, quick commercial break here
00:16:57and we'll be back live from Le Mans in just a second.
00:17:00Stay with us.
00:17:07Welcome back live again, joining Stefan Sarrazan
00:17:10in his Peugeot, fresh from the Piazza on board
00:17:13just a moment or two ago, working his way on cold-ish tyres.
00:17:17They'll be straight out of the tyre oven,
00:17:19but not as hot as they would have been at the end of the lap
00:17:22as he works his way through traffic, through the Ss,
00:17:25catching up to the racing box Porsche, racing box Porsche,
00:17:29the BMS Scuderia Italia Porsche, rather through the Ss.
00:17:34And the witching hours are upon us, boys and girls,
00:17:37Neville Hay, Chris Barsons and Martin Haven here
00:17:40as we head into the night wherever you are across Europe.
00:17:44It's now officially starting to be Sunday
00:17:47and wherever else you are across the world
00:17:49it may be heading towards Monday or getting into Sunday morning,
00:17:52but whatever, the focus of an awful lot of attention,
00:17:55Formula One fans and elsewhere, is on this race at Le Mans
00:17:59because, Neville, it has still got an enormous cachet about it.
00:18:05Over the years, manufacturers have come and gone,
00:18:08different eras of cars have come and gone,
00:18:10but for all, and perhaps because partly of all its unique Frenchness,
00:18:16with all that entails positive and negative,
00:18:18Le Mans is still one of the world's great challenges.
00:18:22Oh, a tremendous challenge, you know.
00:18:24I mean, we welcome insomniacs here at Le Mans.
00:18:27Erm, and I said at any of this battle,
00:18:31we were talking about the GT40s,
00:18:33and er, it's been gorgeous to see these cars.
00:18:36I'm just so sad that they haven't given a really good account of themselves,
00:18:40but perhaps they'll come back another year.
00:18:42You know, when the GT40 first appeared,
00:18:44we were talking about when er, the Lola was bought by Ford,
00:18:48they had a whole load of people developing it.
00:18:50They had, er, Phil Hill.
00:18:52They had, er, the er, other great Richie Ginther driving.
00:18:56Everybody had a go at it.
00:18:58And the one thing they couldn't get right, actually,
00:19:00was the aerodynamics.
00:19:01That was the thing that actually caused them to come here
00:19:03on the practice days, the test days,
00:19:05and write the cars off,
00:19:07and when they came to the first event.
00:19:09And it was just purely, sort of, after everybody had bitten at it,
00:19:12that the old lag, one of the team,
00:19:15who sort of was a great friend of WIRE's,
00:19:18WIRE liked him because he could say,
00:19:20right, well, look, get in it and drive it.
00:19:22And he drove it as fast as it would go,
00:19:24and didn't actually ask any questions.
00:19:26And the old lag said, I think, is the aerodynamics.
00:19:28Do you know what? He was right.
00:19:29They put a spoiler on the back of the handle there afterwards.
00:19:31Well, of course, Ford had those problems with the GT.
00:19:34That's number one.
00:19:36Yes, that's Anthony Davidson, unfortunately.
00:19:38Yeah.
00:19:39Car that led the race until it had an electrical problem,
00:19:41and that is at the S's.
00:19:43He's gone off down in Estelle Chapelle.
00:19:45Of course, this modern version of the S's,
00:19:49very much different from the old S's,
00:19:51which were snaking down through high wall banks in the forest,
00:19:55has been introduced for the motorcycle Grand Prix,
00:19:58predominantly in single-seater racing.
00:20:00And he gets pushed out of the gravel trap there.
00:20:03He's going to find himself back towards a bit of terror more firmer.
00:20:06And that would have cost him maybe 30 seconds to a minute.
00:20:10Yeah, I'd say so.
00:20:11We'll take a look at the lap time next time round.
00:20:13Last lap was a 3 minute 21.6,
00:20:16and the fast lap by the leader was a...
00:20:20The fastest lap we've had so far has been a 3 minute 21.
00:20:23So he's right down there on the outright fastest pace,
00:20:27and it has, as usually is the case, a mix-up in traffic.
00:20:33And putting himself down the inside as I wasn't quite sure what it was, actually.
00:20:38I was looking at the timing screen when the replay started.
00:20:40Somebody, anyway, pinched an inch or two.
00:20:43Also a spin-up.
00:20:44It looks as if they got together, yeah.
00:20:46Yeah, it was one of the Alfa Ventura Corvettes, I believe.
00:20:49Now there is one of them going strongly in second place,
00:20:54Xavier Masson in the 73 car.
00:20:57So we'll take a look at his next lap time.
00:21:00His last lap time was a four minute flat.
00:21:03If we remember in four minutes, we'll have a look back.
00:21:05And Davidson did a 3.21.
00:21:07Now they've come together and both gyrated.
00:21:09Hopefully, no major damage done.
00:21:11But in any situation like that, particularly when you're doing the sort of speeds they are now,
00:21:15as we ride on board them into the first chicane,
00:21:17where again he's trying to find catch-up room now inside what looks like the 008 Signature Plus team, Lola Aston Martin.
00:21:26Whenever you have contact, particularly with the speeds they're doing here there, you want to be really sure that the car is still in one piece,
00:21:34but you haven't got time to check.
00:21:36You've just got to get on with it flat out again.
00:21:38Yeah, you really feel probably the desire to come in and let them have a look at it from the outside,
00:21:44even though it's very briefly is there.
00:21:46But it's a chance you can't really take it.
00:21:48You can't avoid it.
00:21:49You want to carry on.
00:21:50And he took a lot of gravel on as well.
00:21:53You can see it flying around, so you'll see it again.
00:21:56Well, this is a repair.
00:21:57You can actually see, when it gives a sudden jerk, that what's happened, I think possibly, the Corvette driver didn't see him.
00:22:03Yeah, well, he may well have been blinded by the headlights as he came in, but it's very hard to tell.
00:22:08And the simple rule in motorsport is the faster car must make the clean pass, and you expect the other driver to stay on the racing line,
00:22:17so you've got at least some idea of predicting where he's going to go.
00:22:20Well, it was the late Dennis Jenkinson that said the piece of advice that he gave to all drivers was,
00:22:25look, stick to your line.
00:22:27He wants to come by you, let him find his way, but don't do anything to help him,
00:22:31because you'll probably make it worse, you'll hinder him.
00:22:34Well, we saw that early in the race, where Andy Frio tried to give a little bit more room to Alan McNish in the number seven Audi,
00:22:41as they got into the Porsche curves, and unfortunately, McNish was already committed to the outside.
00:22:49I can remember a 1,000-kilometre race in Brands Hatch, where Joachim Maas was taken off at enormous speed by a car doing exactly that in clear ways.
00:22:58Moving offline, Joachim Maas was committed to go around the outside, and he had a huge rant about it.
00:23:05And rightly so, because if you don't stay on the racing line, there is no chance the driver following you can predict where you're going.
00:23:13If you stay on the racing line as Davidson comes by the pits and eschews a chance to come in, it obviously feels okay.
00:23:19If you don't stay on the racing line, then all bets are off. There's no idea where you're going next.
00:23:24So give the guy a fighting chance. He's good, he'll find a way past.
00:23:28That was the Pink Panther, by the way, that Joachim Maas fell over.
00:23:32It was a fellow, yes, I wasn't going to bore everybody with Roy Baker racing tiger stories, but since you brought it out, we won't bore them any further.
00:23:42Do you remember who was driving? I don't.
00:23:44Yes, but I won't criticize him.
00:23:49Tell us when we're off air with you, and then we can basically pretend we knew all the time.
00:23:53Absolutely.
00:23:54Now here is the driver change getting ready to happen for the 73 Corvette.
00:23:59That's Julien Jus, last year racing in the FIA Formula 2 championship.
00:24:04So obviously coming from a single-seater background, as does his younger brother, or as his younger brother is currently in.
00:24:10Xavier Masson, also an ex-single-seater driver.
00:24:12And their slightly more elderly third driver, Patrice Goulard, who's been a long-time supporter of GT racing.
00:24:20He's 44 compared to 24 on Jus, who is the younger member of the team, the youngest member of the team.
00:24:27And he's going to be ready to take on that 73 car.
00:24:29And what did we say, 4 minutes, 7.3.
00:24:34Oh, and we've got another car off, car number 63 in the gravel traps.
00:24:38That's the Corvette of Jan Magnussen, Johnny O'Connell, Antonio Garcia.
00:24:42Our GT2 class, second-placed car.
00:24:46And posted 96, which is nine kilometres into the lap.
00:24:51Oh, that's the fast, no, that's the slow left-hand route, Indianapolis.
00:24:56I was trying to work out where it was, yeah.
00:24:58My map tells me.
00:24:59Yeah.
00:25:00Don't, sadly, if I remember rightly, Mr. Magnussen has started racing, hasn't he?
00:25:05Oh, yes, he has, Kevin.
00:25:06It was quite worrying, that show.
00:25:08And very well, yes.
00:25:09Kevin seems to be equally adept in throwing a single seat around us.
00:25:12The old, well, it's not a pedicle, Jan Magnussen, the old man.
00:25:16No.
00:25:17Even though he is a father.
00:25:18Uh, 36, no, I don't know if that qualifies as old.
00:25:21No, don't.
00:25:22So, no, Jan Kevin Magnussen is still 16.
00:25:24Very, very capable indeed, it seems.
00:25:26Very short Grand Prix career, though, Jan Magnussen.
00:25:29I think, basically, the atmosphere that surrounds Grand Prix racing didn't suit him very well.
00:25:35Uh, he looked to be having the right place, the right time, but it all fell over for him, didn't it, Martin?
00:25:41Yes, I think he was quick enough, I just think it just did his head in, and he was either too young for it,
00:25:46or just actually wasn't the kind of guy that will deal with it.
00:25:50However, he has continued to carve himself a very successful racing for sports cars, and a real linchpin now in this Corvette program.
00:26:01However, they were running first and second of two Corvettes.
00:26:04They were about two minutes apart.
00:26:08In fact, it's Johnny O'Connell in the car, in the gravel.
00:26:12Still in the gravel, we believe.
00:26:13And up to third place now in the GT2 class has come the Leigh Porsche.
00:26:19This is the 77 Felbermayr Porsche.
00:26:21The blue car driven by Mark Leigh, uh, and Volp Hensler and Richard Leigh.
00:26:27So no even, uh, fake pretense of having a Felbermayr or a Gerald and Christian Reid that Proton used to run aboard the car.
00:26:36Felbermayr's are in the other car.
00:26:38The three factory drivers are in the 77 car.
00:26:41That's now up to third place.
00:26:42Car 63 has rejoined, and maybe now at half past one.
00:26:47Let's just have a quick scoot down the order.
00:26:49If you want to find what the times and positions are yourself,
00:26:52and particularly if we haven't referred to your favourite car for some while,
00:26:56uh, either A because we've forgotten to or B because it's retired,
00:26:59you can go to LeMond.org on your laptop or a computer and have a look at their timing and scoring.
00:27:04That'll tell you everything.
00:27:05So our overall leader is Stefan Zarazan from Nicola Lapierre,
00:27:10Peugeot's first and second.
00:27:12Audi, Timo Bernhardt and Marcel Fasler and Tom Christensen.
00:27:16They are third, fourth and fifth.
00:27:18Peugeot, Anthony Davidson sixth after his recent excursion.
00:27:21The two Lola Rastons as was.
00:27:23Adrian Fernandez still driving ahead of Sam Hancock.
00:27:26007 and 009, their seventh and eighth.
00:27:28Rounding out the top ten.
00:27:29Christian Albers in the older Collez Audi, the R10 TDI.
00:27:34He's in ninth.
00:27:35And Sayeli Ari in car number six.
00:27:37Ugly Shonag's Orica prototype.
00:27:39The open car rather than the Peugeot closed car.
00:27:42That lies in tenth place.
00:27:44And we'll take a quick commercial break.
00:27:46And round up the rest of the classes on the other side of this word.
00:27:52Welcome back live to LeMond.
00:27:53As you see the second car in a GT car, a GT2 class, a GT1 class even having a routine pit stop.
00:28:00This is the Alphand Aventure Corvette, kind of a 73, which was driven earlier by Xavier Masson when it had an unintentional collision.
00:28:10I think it was that car with the number one Peugeot.
00:28:12Now Julian Jus has taken it over.
00:28:15joined Luc Alphand's team earlier this year at the beginning of the LeMond series programme.
00:28:21And turning into quite an entertaining young sports car peddler as well.
00:28:26We've covered the overall top ten just a minute or two ago.
00:28:29And that all includes the LMP1 cars.
00:28:32This is the number one machine of Anthony Davidson.
00:28:35So he was obviously pretty much due a stop when he had his incident a couple of laps ago.
00:28:40Didn't bother coming in because he knew he was coming in anyway.
00:28:43Torches as you would expect examining everything.
00:28:46Car looks okay.
00:28:47Anthony staying in.
00:28:49And just receiving fuel tyres there on the far side of the car as we look at it now just in case.
00:28:56And that is the sign of the impact there below the P1 label with what I'm sure was that 73 Corvette in the GT2 class.
00:29:08So our leader goes out.
00:29:09There is Anthony Davidson.
00:29:11Sharing with Marc Genet and Alexander Wurtz.
00:29:15Average height of the team is about 5 foot 8.
00:29:18Except for Wurtz.
00:29:20No.
00:29:21Only because Alexander Wurtz is about 6 foot 3.
00:29:24Yeah.
00:29:25And Davidson's about 5 foot 0.
00:29:27And Marc Genet is about average racing driver height as opposed to petite racing driver height which Davidson is.
00:29:32And how Davidson gets in off the back of Wurtz without having a massive seat insert Lord only knows.
00:29:39Amazing.
00:29:40But he's out and back up to speed and again as you have to in this race showing ultimate commitment right from the moment he gets out of the pit lane and right back up to speed.
00:29:50I feel rather sad actually that his Formula 1 career has not taken off again in any way because if you looked at his testing times when he was with Honda he was very very much on the pace and I think that the newer teams the three new teams made a serious error in not getting him because he is such a good sorter of cars.
00:30:12There's a big difference actually that's becoming more and more prevalent now in Formula 1 and in sports cars as well.
00:30:20When everything is done with the computer and you put it all in and that's fine and that's what it says.
00:30:24But then the driver says no it doesn't actually do that.
00:30:27Well the problem is if you've got a new car with new designers and new engineers and a whole new programme and you put in a driver who doesn't know what a good Formula 1 car feels like you're never going to get the feedback that tells you when the Formula 1 car is good.
00:30:39Exactly.
00:30:40It's just going to be whatever it is and he's just going to drive it as quickly as he can.
00:30:44If you then rent somebody who does know what good feels like you end up getting guided in the same in the correct direction.
00:30:52We see that time and time again in single seater championships where midfield at best teams hire a decent driver and then he tells them when they're in the sweet spot and suddenly they end up winning races and being right up the sharp end of the grid.
00:31:07At elevated levels that they would never otherwise have attained and yeah it is a shame for Anthony that he hasn't been picked up long before now and unfortunately a lot of the teams have missed out.
00:31:19Yeah but is that not sports car's gain to have got someone like Anthony Davidson?
00:31:25I think to have him with a team like Peugeot yes it is sports car's gain and I think that that probably is going to mean that for want of a better word if you look at the fact that Alan McNeish is life's begun for him this year you know.
00:31:41Well Anthony is about nine years younger so life could just about begin to be beginning for him and he could actually find himself a very nice safe berth in international sports car racing and I think that would be a good thing for him now because he deserves it.
00:32:00Yeah and actually Anthony comparing him to Alan McNeish I think is a decent comparison because Alan certainly used success in sports cars to regenerate a career in single seat or a career that in single seat has had sort of ground to a fairly disappointing haul for him.
00:32:20He picked up a good ride in sports cars ended up being a Porsche factory driver ended up winning Le Mans and then by Dinter being one of the best sports car drivers in the business ended up being attracted by or Toyota ended up being attracted to him and giving him a run in their Formula One car.
00:32:39Okay didn't end up with him then conquering the dizzying heights of Formula One but there's an awful lot of drivers that have been into Formula One and come out the other end and haven't got anything on their CV even remotely as interesting as one Le Mans win never mind a series of Le Mans wins.
00:32:54So yeah Alan didn't end up being the Formula One world champion but he's done something that not very many people get to do either which is become a multiple Le Mans winner.
00:33:03In relation to what she was saying and being a member of a team a Formula One team and bringing in a driver who knows what does work and what doesn't work one of the big problems of course with the Toyota Formula One team was they never actually made the car work as well as it should have done and I sometimes doubt whether they had anybody who was able to really sort it.
00:33:25Well because that was because the car was designed by committee from Japan.
00:33:30Yes yes one of the big problems that I think everyone is well aware of that some I don't say all but some of the Japanese tended to make or tended to make and this also was they were the Honda Team at one time all the decisions in Japan by committee.
00:33:47And it took ten days on a fortnight to actually get someone to say yes as opposed to in Formula One it ought to take somewhere around about ten seconds to say yes we will or no we won't.
00:34:01But that's where Honda were clever in bringing in Ross Brawn.
00:34:04It was indeed.
00:34:06Who could take the whole thing forward.
00:34:07And it could have worked and would have worked for them had they had the patience to stay with it but they somehow or other I think threw all their toys out of the pram and there you go.
00:34:17Third place car on Pier Road, Timo Bernhardt in the number nine Audi.
00:34:21Three red lights down the side denotes that it's in third place in its class.
00:34:25The red denotes that it is in the P1 class so the overall fastest running cars.
00:34:31And he hands his car over.
00:34:34So that car is lying two laps off the lead, one lap behind the second place Peugeot which is not the sort of gap that you are necessarily going to find on pace alone particularly if you're in Audi which is slower than the Peugeot's but with 13 hours still to go plenty of time for people to bump into, trip over or otherwise have problems with things not necessarily of their own making.
00:35:00I've got a question for you two.
00:35:02Go ahead.
00:35:03You're both sage, sage chaps that have been around this long.
00:35:06How in the, God in heaven, did our friends at Audi come to Le Mans with a car two years running this year which wasn't competitive?
00:35:17How did it happen?
00:35:19I can't believe that the Germans would do it.
00:35:21Well because Peugeot have accelerated their programme and pushed their programme so far forward in the way that Audi did over the years to defeat the current frontrunners when they arrived and they have overtaken Audi.
00:35:35And it's as simple as that.
00:35:36Martin, I don't think, I really don't think that Audi is the car that it should be.
00:35:41Well it is exactly the car they designed.
00:35:44They have got what they wanted according to the drivers.
00:35:47It is turning the speed that they wanted it to turn in the simulations.
00:35:51What's happened is Peugeot particularly in the engine department has taken a big step forward that nobody expected and certainly Audi didn't expect.
00:36:00So you think it's the engine department that has made to some degree the difference?
00:36:05Well the chassis is the same as last year and the year before and the year before and the year before.
00:36:09The aerodynamics are barely changed and yet it's going a lot faster.
00:36:15Yeah well I think that puts us all in our place.
00:36:17You know I never thought it would be quite that way.
00:36:18It's pretty straightforward.
00:36:20Peugeot introduced a new engine this year, a much quicker new engine this year and Audi were caught napping.
00:36:26They really were caught napping because it was quite amazing.
00:36:29I mean when we first came here on Thursday, on Wednesday and I came up here and I just looked for those first few laps.
00:36:35I stood at the back of the box there and said loud voice and Mark said pshh.
00:36:40I said well that's it isn't it?
00:36:41You know I'm sad to say that I was right.
00:36:45Unless something happens but Neville going back to what you've just been talking about of design by committee.
00:36:53Are you not saying that about Audi?
00:36:57The thing was designed by committee not by you know.
00:37:00Well no car is now designed by one single person apart from anything you have an engine department and a chassis department and an aerodynamic department because there are too many disciplines for Colin Chapman to sit down and draw it up on a piece of paper in a week like he used to do in the good old days.
00:37:16So everything is designed by a committee that doesn't make it inefficient it makes it efficient when people are concentrating on their specialist areas but what has happened here is Peugeot have taken a step ahead that Audi have not matched.
00:37:30It's as simple as that it happens.
00:37:31The other strange thing of course while we're talking about design and design of racing cars sports racing cars and what have you is that there was one man who stands out a head and shoulders above everybody else who has designed Grand Prix cars in the last 20 years and that's Adrian Nguyen.
00:37:53Silence.
00:37:54Yes.
00:37:55But it is.
00:37:56You think about it.
00:37:56Think back to the days of Williams, days of McLaren, current days.
00:38:02He really has had a grip that is quite amazing over the last 20 years.
00:38:08I would venture that Ross Braun has been in charge of more cars that have won more championships.
00:38:12Ah yes I'm not saying that I'm saying that from the pure design standpoint.
00:38:17Design doesn't always do it as every race is proving.
00:38:20And again looking here at the Judd powered car of Paul Drayson and his team.
00:38:28This car has been single-handedly I think about the most troublesome thing in the pit roads.
00:38:35It has been in and out with a catalogue of woes that I don't think the team could possibly have envisaged in their worst nightmares.
00:38:44The car has generally been pretty reliable so far this season but clearly was saving up an awful lot of spite for the race.
00:38:52What they're doing, I don't know what they're doing here now, looks like they're recompressing an air system of some kind unless they're filling up a drink system.
00:38:59That took an awful long time.
00:39:01It has been a catalogue of errors for that car.
00:39:04It just refuses to stay on the track.
00:39:07Despite which, Paul Drayson, Johnny Cochran and Emmanuel Epiria are actually turning some fairly quick laps when it's out on the track.
00:39:15But the number of make, in fact, let's see how many, it's now made 14 pit stops.
00:39:22The next most is the WR with 13 and in the LNP1 class, oh in fact Neil Yarny's number 12 Rebellion Lola has made 14 stops as well.
00:39:35But it's, the Drayson car, they've had a lot of problems with it and every time it comes in they have to fix an extra something which is why it's nowhere near the top 10 and in fact not even anywhere near the top 20.
00:39:47It's 33rd place.
00:39:48Meanwhile, 4th place, 2nd place car number 4 comes in and Nicola Lapierre bails out at the end of his triple stint in that car.
00:39:58That is its 14th pit stop, same as the Drayson car.
00:40:04It has now completed 175 laps, the Drayson car 143 laps and that tells its own story.
00:40:11Puncher there on the AF Corsa Ferrari.
00:40:14Now, we may well be in for a bit of a rash of GT pit stops or either that or this may be out of sequence.
00:40:21If he's lucky, it will have come when he was planning to come into the pits anyway.
00:40:25We did see that Giancarlo Fisichella was helmeted up anyway, so I suspected, despite the grim look on John Alessi's face, Fisichella was ready.
00:40:37I think perhaps Alessi was due to come in now anyway.
00:40:425th in the GT2 class.
00:40:45Looking rather accusingly at the tyres there, but generally speaking tyres don't puncture all on themselves.
00:40:50They normally have something go into them, so can't normally blame the rubber for everything.
00:40:56GT2 still being led by the number 64 Corvette, Olivier Beretta, at the moment.
00:41:0163 Corvette still in second place, even after it was beached in the gravel.
00:41:05Antonio Garcia took that car over.
00:41:07That's the GT2 lead battle.
00:41:09Alessi being debriefed quickly by the team.
00:41:12Mark Lieb, third in the GT2 class.
00:41:15Fourth is Raymond Narak.
00:41:17They're both in Porsche's.
00:41:1877 is the first of the Felbermayer Proton cars.
00:41:2176, Raymond Narak in the Imsum Atmuk performance car.
00:41:25In 5th in the GT2 class is Horst Farmbasher.
00:41:28Senior or junior, I'm not sure.
00:41:30Scoring doesn't tell us.
00:41:31In their 89 car, the Hankook Ferrari.
00:41:35Sorry, Dominic Farmbasher.
00:41:37That he shares with Alan Simonson and Lee Keane.
00:41:40And finally, sixth in the class is the BMW, the 78 car.
00:41:46The white BMW.
00:41:48Augusto Farf is currently in the wheel of the car.
00:41:50He shares with Jörg Muller and Uwe Altsen.
00:41:52And that's starting to shake off its problems and make some progress up the order now.
00:41:55Up in the sixth place, ahead of Richard Westbrook in the 97 BMW Scuderi Italia Porsche.
00:42:01We'll be back with more from Le Mans in just a second.
00:42:04Welcome back live to Le Mans where the number 12 Rebellion Lola Coupe is currently in the
00:42:11garage having just been pulled back in.
00:42:13Creve's screen cleaning going on.
00:42:18Neil Yarny at the wheel and just out of the pits and straight into the barriers.
00:42:23Tim Greaves plants the Janetta very firmly.
00:42:27That's the Brookladdy car.
00:42:29He has just this minute left the pit lane.
00:42:32No, he is just this minute leaving the pit lane.
00:42:35So that was...
00:42:37Anyone?
00:42:39Hands up?
00:42:40Um, well, I think he did it actually on his way in because I picked up the car when it
00:42:48came into the pits and I thought he's just had a spin.
00:42:51Actually, that was the whole thing.
00:42:52That's a pre-record of what happened beforehand.
00:42:55I've just heard that in the air.
00:42:56So that's him recovering out of the pits.
00:42:58Yes.
00:42:58Right.
00:42:59He's been in the pits.
00:43:00They put it all right again.
00:43:01Out you go.
00:43:01Back into real time.
00:43:02Yeah.
00:43:03Don't find a dreadless.
00:43:04Dear Lord.
00:43:05Don't do it again.
00:43:06Do you remember in the 1970s when they started showing replays off take, they had a big flashing
00:43:11R on them?
00:43:11Hello, anyone?
00:43:14If you're showing a replay, put replay up on the screen, for goodness sake.
00:43:18Yeah.
00:43:18Fool anybody.
00:43:19Especially an idiot like me.
00:43:20Especially at this time of night.
00:43:21Now then, while we're looking at the number 72 Alphona Venture Covet on pit lane, that's
00:43:28Jerome Polycon, of course, an alternator going in, so that's got no electrics.
00:43:33In also comes Marcel Fassler's Audi.
00:43:35He will hand over to Ben Monterey's turn again.
00:43:40Oh, I can't remember which order they're in at the moment.
00:43:43We'll have to wait and see.
00:43:44I think it is.
00:43:45Andre Lotter.
00:43:47It's Andre Lotter, no.
00:43:48Is it?
00:43:48Ah.
00:43:49Shane is Japanese, of course.
00:43:50Andre Lotter, the well-known Japanese driver from Switzerland.
00:43:53How so?
00:43:54How so, indeed.
00:43:55Well, they mostly earn their living in Japan.
00:43:59Actually, about half the Audi team do, the younger guys, but Andre Lotter takes it over
00:44:05then, and they are currently lying third overall with the Roman Duma in the other Audi, the
00:44:11number nine car, the other non-delayed Audi, in at fourth position, the way he goes, he's
00:44:16just like metronomic work in the pit lane, isn't it?
00:44:19You know, and they'll still be doing that at five to three, if necessary, tomorrow afternoon.
00:44:23In, do it, done, go quick.
00:44:26So well-drilled, the whole thing, isn't it?
00:44:28Well, that's.
00:44:28So it's just quite a remarkable second nature.
00:44:30That's Reinhold Jost for you.
00:44:32Yeah.
00:44:32It's his team, and he's always run a team along those lines, and he's been a major force
00:44:39at Le Mans for many, many years.
00:44:40As a driver, and as a team, and as a driver, he was a formidable driver, wasn't he?
00:44:45Oh, yes.
00:44:46I mean, it wasn't, he was one of those drivers, I think, over a long career doing this job,
00:44:53you've seen them, and I've seen them, some of them really, really work at it.
00:44:58They are, the fact that they win races is because they work at it.
00:45:02Oh, indeed.
00:45:02And he is a workaholic.
00:45:04And Reinhold, yes, and a very intelligent.
00:45:07Yeah, highly intelligent, those eyes, they're piercing eyes, and you know when you look
00:45:11at him, the determination to succeed is just, wow.
00:45:15When he can actually beat the factory Porsche team in a private car, that takes some doing.
00:45:22Name to the past.
00:45:23I know we've been talking about him, joking about him over the weekend.
00:45:26Tom Walker was exactly the same.
00:45:28That was just that absolute determination that was going to overcome whatever the situation
00:45:35was.
00:45:35Tom was determined he was going to beat it.
00:45:37Well, we may have the situation here this weekend with the Eureka team running the Porsche, which
00:45:47they're doing so efficiently at the moment.
00:45:49I can't come to a nice bloke to get in.
00:45:52I mean, he's a lovely man, and very much a father figure for anybody who drives for him,
00:45:58sort of arm around them, a lot of support, and all that sort of thing.
00:46:00But I think if you're crossing it, it's quite difficult.
00:46:05GT2 leader on pit low.
00:46:06I think we'll leave that slanderous line of pursuit a little further down the line.
00:46:11Olivier Barreto was the man at the helm of the 64 Corvette.
00:46:15Corvette's still first and second in the GT2 class.
00:46:18Incidentally, we were enjoying very much early on the battle between this car, car number
00:46:2364, and the Risi Competizione, car number 82, driven by Jamie Malo, Jimmy Bruni, and Pierre
00:46:30Caffer.
00:46:31That will continue no longer.
00:46:34In fact, it hasn't been going for some while, as Risi have run into a string of problems,
00:46:38predominantly gearbox-related, and in the end, terminal.
00:46:42Risi are no more, at least that red car is no more.
00:46:45The one that's had a slightly harder time from the drivers, in terms of being hit-off things
00:46:51rather than just being flailed around the track.
00:46:53The 83 Risi Competizione car, the Crone Racing, green one, that I believe is still going.
00:46:59And for J-Lock fanciers, just ponder that phrase for a moment or two, it's still in the
00:47:06pits.
00:47:08Sushi Yugo, nominally at the wheel of the Japanese Lamborghini Owners Club, Lamborghini Gallardo,
00:47:15Mercy Largo, and that is slipping down the order, about to go into the netherworld.
00:47:19That is page three of the timing screen.
00:47:21Which we can't read.
00:47:22So, once it drops off past 40 seconds, we will cease to score, or indeed probably even
00:47:29notice the J-Lock Lamborghini, I'm afraid.
00:47:31So, Lamborghini fans, you might want to get your own timing monitors on on your computer
00:47:35screens.
00:47:36In two is the car that is third, fourth in the GT2 class now, Raymond Narak, the man
00:47:43who is Matmut.
00:47:45He is at the wheel of the car that he chairs traditionally, of course, with Patrick Pille, and they've had
00:47:52a lot of success at Le Mans in this car.
00:47:54And young American Pat Long joins them and considerably adds to the pace of their driver lineup.
00:48:02He's a very quick factory Porsche driver and at least the match of any of the other guys
00:48:08in the other Porsche cars as well.
00:48:10And, of course, the whole point of spreading the Porsche talent around as many teams as
00:48:14you possibly can is to try and make sure that Corvette and Ferrari and BMW and Aston Martin
00:48:20don't get to win them on.
00:48:21And Porsche do.
00:48:22But, at the moment, they are chasing because Corvette's new GT2 programme appears to be
00:48:28about as convincingly efficient as their old GT1 programme was.
00:48:31Yeah, when you get on the Porsche books as a Porsche driver, you know, a lot of people
00:48:35sort of say, ah, I want to be a racing driver.
00:48:37I'll tell you what, you get on the Porsche books, like what I tell you to get names you
00:48:41mentioned, Pat Long among them.
00:48:42You're made, aren't you, really?
00:48:43Providing you're a good boy, you're made.
00:48:46Well, you don't get any unless you are an extremely good boy.
00:48:49I remember talking to Lucas Lua years ago, he went to one of these big test days they
00:48:53have, and he was called back into the pits after four laps and told to get out.
00:49:00They said, but you said I could have ten laps.
00:49:01No, get out.
00:49:03And he was pulled out of the car because they said he was going recklessly fast.
00:49:08And then he was signed because he was going, not recklessly fast, but incredibly controlled
00:49:13and fast.
00:49:14There is our field rundown.
00:49:16P2 class in blue being led by the HPD of Danny Watts with Moreno Franchitti giving
00:49:23chase.
00:49:24Looks like those two have been in there for just about ever.
00:49:26In the GT2 class, the orangey yellow cars.
00:49:30Yellow on our screens, orange on yours.
00:49:32It is Corvettes to the fore.
00:49:34And in GT1, the green cars.
00:49:36Gabriel Gardel, the leader, is on the pit road with the Celine coming down towards us as
00:49:41we speak.
00:49:42He is some, gosh, two laps ahead of the 73 Corvette of Julianne Juice.
00:49:49There he is, even as we speak.
00:49:51And in third place, Jonathan Hershey still rolling in that Ford, which is now nearly ten
00:49:58laps off the lead of the class, is nine laps off the lead of the class.
00:50:03Thomas Hanger fourth in the young driver Aston Martin.
00:50:06The DVR9 is in fifth class in GT1.
00:50:08Fifth place in position in GT1.
00:50:10Trent Polycon in the Corvette in sixth place in GT1.
00:50:13That is the second Alphonse Ventura car.
00:50:16So there you see the Celine in its last race here at Le Mans.
00:50:20It will run out of homologation for Le Mans racing at the end of the year.
00:50:25And GT1 will pretty much, it would appear, cease to exist in at least its current form next
00:50:33year.
00:50:33Not sure that Le Mans are particularly over-worried about taking on the new GT1 regulations.
00:50:39They've got so many cars in GT2, and including all the major manufacturers, that they might
00:50:46as well just expand GT2 and have more major manufacturers or more cars from major manufacturers.
00:50:52Because from the side of the track, can you tell the difference between the Alphonse Corvettes
00:50:57and the factory Corvettes?
00:50:59No.
00:51:00And the GT2, there are just so many manufacturers.
00:51:04It's looking fantastic.
00:51:05All right, BMW don't seem to have had a very good Le Mans this year, but...
00:51:10They will.
00:51:11It'll be all right.
00:51:11They'll come back.
00:51:12Yeah.
00:51:13Yeah, BMW don't sort of roll over and say, oh dear, they'll get on with it.
00:51:18Well, you struggle to remember now, but of course when Audi came here, they fell flat
00:51:23on their face in the first year.
00:51:25Yeah.
00:51:25With the original cars open and closed, it didn't really cover themselves in glory, but you've
00:51:32got to learn.
00:51:32And just like everybody else coming here, you've got to pay your dues.
00:51:36You have to learn how to work the car into the racetrack, and you have to learn how to
00:51:40deal with the traffic and all the other problems that life throws at you.
00:51:43And boy, did they learn.
00:51:45Behind the Porsche there, let's take a little look at the 75 cars.
00:51:51We've barely talked about that pro-speed car.
00:51:53It is an all-gentleman driver line-up.
00:51:55Paul van Splunter and Nick Hommersen and Louis Machels.
00:51:58But behind them has come in the Oak Racing Pescarolo.
00:52:02This is the young driver's Oak Racing Pescarolo.
00:52:05This is third in our G to LMP2 category, going very strongly indeed.
00:52:12And of course, with Henri not able to run his own team this year for various reasons, which
00:52:17largely involved him being stitched up by a potential backer.
00:52:22The Pescarolo name being represented very much by the Oak Racing team here, and the car's
00:52:30designer, Richard de Villa, here overseeing progress.
00:52:33Mathieu LaHaye, Guillermo Moreau and Jean Cherouze doing a really solid job with that car, bearing
00:52:38in mind its relative vintage compared to the much more up-to-date Acura, and particularly
00:52:44HPD package, that Pescarolo Jagd is giving a significantly better showing of itself than
00:52:50last year's Oak Racing Pescarolo Mazda.
00:52:53Same chassis, but with a very different engine.
00:52:57This time they've got one that'll actually run throughout the race, and so it is doing
00:53:01exactly that.
00:53:02And here's the car that's chasing them.
00:53:03And what's about a minute behind, as they both came into the pits, Warren Hughes in
00:53:09the Ginetta Zytec, this is the Kiefer ASM car, which was the previous Le Mans Series champion,
00:53:15and ruled the roost in this LMP2 category, at least until this season began.
00:53:21So they are finding that what they've got is working just as efficiently as before, but
00:53:26as we've seen with Audi and Peugeot, the opposition have taken a step forward into the future,
00:53:32and they're not able to match it, and now all they can do is do what they do and hope
00:53:38that it's enough.
00:53:39Yeah, going for the reliability factor.
00:53:42It's very interesting looking at the leading cars' times, because the Peugeots and the first
00:53:51two Audis, they're seesawing backwards and forwards, the times are there.
00:53:57But then you look down at Tom Christensen, and he really is going very well indeed, doing
00:54:03three 23s, where the other cars doing 24s, 25s, 26s.
00:54:10So he's really on it at this time of the night.
00:54:15I think he's a bit miffed, actually.
00:54:16I think that that little collision that he had sort of rather put him into a situation
00:54:21which he doesn't like.
00:54:24There's no question about it.
00:54:25Tom is one of those people who thinks that this should be his personal race, and it's
00:54:30not going quite the way he wants it to be.
00:54:31Well, of course, he's trying to make up time after a delay, as is Anthony Davidson.
00:54:35So the cars in fifth and sixth are both going quicker than anybody in front of them.
00:54:40The problem is they've got several laps to catch up, and they're not going to do it on
00:54:44pace.
00:54:44They're only going to do it if somebody else has a problem to match theirs.
00:54:47And you tend to find at Le Monde that if you have a problem, that's pretty much it.
00:54:52The car that wins is the one that runs trouble-free.
00:54:54At the moment, Stefan Sarrazan leads for Peugeot from Le Duval in the Orica run Peugeot.
00:55:00That car you're looking at there, Andre Lotter as Audi, is fourth.
00:55:03Best Audi is Roman Duma in fifth, and then in fifth and sixth, in third rather than fifth
00:55:09and sixth, the delayed cars of Tom Christensen for Audi and Anthony Davidson for Peugeot.
00:55:15And again, still the best of the non-diesel cars, 007, 009, the Lola Aston Martins.
00:55:20Quick break, we'll be back.
00:55:24Welcome back to Le Monde.
00:55:25Good timing, everybody.
00:55:27You rejoin us as our race leader is on pit road, right down there amongst all those
00:55:32orange or purple even vests, is this car, Stefan Sarrazan's number two Peugeot.
00:55:39It's done 181 laps after nearly half the race.
00:55:45We're getting down, well, we're into 12 hours and 51 minutes remaining.
00:55:49So we're approaching the midway.
00:55:50We've just done 11 hours and the car in for routine service.
00:55:55Now, of course, it inherited the lead after problems for two cars that were running in front
00:56:01of it.
00:56:01Number three car with a suspension failure retired.
00:56:04Number one car with a problem with the electrics had a significant delay and Anthony Davidson
00:56:09is four laps behind, trying desperately to catch.
00:56:13And the problem for this car, every time they try and go quickly, they use more fuel.
00:56:19Now, that sounds like a pretty staringly obvious problem.
00:56:24Don't go so quickly.
00:56:25But unfortunately, Jeremy Shaw, that's leaving them rather at the mercy of anyone else.
00:56:30When they try and up their pace to match their rivals, they don't make 12 laps on fuel.
00:56:36And nobody's quite sure why.
00:56:38No, that's right.
00:56:3912 laps as opposed to 13 laps.
00:56:41Yeah, it's at this stage, it's really not particularly critical, I think, for that team
00:56:45at least, because they've got such a healthy margin over everybody.
00:56:50I mean, it's not a huge margin by any means.
00:56:51I mean, it's just a little bit more than a lap over Roman Dumas in third place in the
00:56:56first of the Audi.
00:56:56So, you know, they've been, what, the last two or three hours, there really hasn't been
00:57:01much change at the front.
00:57:02It's kind of an interesting kind of seesaw battle there.
00:57:05But, you know, the advantage is very definitely stands with Peugeot and particularly that number
00:57:09two car.
00:57:11But they can't afford to relax.
00:57:14They just have to keep on doing what they're doing.
00:57:16And I just love watching that pit stop, the choreography of how the guys move around.
00:57:20There's only ever two people over that line at any one particular time.
00:57:24But there's about five or six people, I think, that are actually involved in that pit stop
00:57:27process.
00:57:28And that's really fascinating to watch that, to unfold it before a rise there with that
00:57:32great camera work from the pit lane.
00:57:34Just saw the little graphic there.
00:57:35Two minutes, 52 in the last lap between Stefan Sarrazan in this car and his closest rival,
00:57:41Loic Duval.
00:57:42Loic Duval now turning three minute, 23.0 lap on his last lap.
00:57:48That is the fastest car in the field by over two seconds.
00:57:52So he is absolutely on a tear.
00:57:55Obviously, soon to come into the pits because he's not that far off Sarrazan's schedule.
00:57:59But making the very most of the car on light fuel and presumably with a relatively clean
00:58:04lap as well.
00:58:05Now, dipping down into the LMP2 class as we look at the RML Lola with its HPD engine.
00:58:12That's had a bit of a delay.
00:58:13That has now slipped from third down into fifth, sixth position and nicely bracketed
00:58:20by a pair of Ginettas.
00:58:21Isn't it, Laurence Tomlinson of Ginetta?
00:58:23Welcome.
00:58:24Thank you very much.
00:58:25Well, it's certainly the race that I've started watching since Nigel crashed out early on.
00:58:30And it's an interesting battle for us.
00:58:32We always thought the HPDs were going to be too quick for us to catch.
00:58:36And, you know, whether they're going to last 24 hours at this pace, it's a remarkable pace
00:58:41for LMP2.
00:58:43But if we were offered this at the start of the race, I think as Ginetta's eye tech, we
00:58:48would have taken it.
00:58:50It does slightly look from the outside.
00:58:53And I don't know how much you sort of see this as though maybe we're looking at a real
00:58:58generation change.
00:58:59And the Acura HPD package in both departments, it would seem, is another step forward.
00:59:04And is that something that Ginetta will sit down and think, OK, maybe it's time to get
00:59:09back to the drawing board and see how much we can advance this?
00:59:13Obviously, there's a whole new raft of rule changes coming in for 2011, some of which we
00:59:17may or may not be aware of, some of which may or may not change before they're finalised.
00:59:23But with that in mind, presumably you're already starting to make plans and scratch your head
00:59:27a bit.
00:59:28Well, what we tend to do is look at the detail behind it.
00:59:30And, you know, the Ginetta LNP2 car last year was absolutely blindingly fast and it won
00:59:37the championship.
00:59:38So we were delighted with that.
00:59:40If you look at the detail, we have Danny Watts who used to drive for me and we've got Olivier
00:59:44Pla who drove for me also at Petit Le Mans.
00:59:47So when you compare them as drivers, I know from their data there's absolutely nothing in
00:59:51them.
00:59:52So you then look at it and say, is it the car?
00:59:55And then you say, it could be the car and you could also say there's a bit of a tyre
00:59:58battle going on there.
00:59:58The HPDs both.
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