Old Reliable: Tom Kristensen wins his seventh Le Mans GARY WATKINS Published Date: 6/20/05 The 2005 Le Mans 24 Hours, the 73rd running of the biggest event in sports car racing, should be remembered for three reasons: Tom Kristensen notching a seventh win in the event, surpassing the record he previously held with Jacky Ickx; the Audi R8 bowing out from the event with an amazing fifth win in six years; and the Champion Racing team becoming the first American team to triumph at La Sarthe since Carroll Shelby’s organization won with Ford back in 1967. The last of those feats will probably be overlooked in Europe, but the long absence of an American team from the winner’s circle underlines the significance of the win for Dave Maraj’s ultra-professional Florida team. So long has it been since the Star Spangled Banner was played on the podium: Kristensen was not even born when Dan Gurney and A.J. Foyt triumphed with the Shelby America team. Kristensen’s teammates in the winning R8, JJ Lehto and Marco Werner, weren’t out of diapers yet. An emotional Maraj, who was making his fourth bid for Le Mans honors, was keen to point out just how hard it had been. “It is very difficult for an American team to come here and compete at this high level,” he said. “There is a certain attitude in Europe that the American way is not the best way. The American way isn’t better or worse, it’s just different. And today it worked.” Maraj also paid tribute to both the Audi R8 and his drivers, and therein laid the secret of his success. The best of the two Champion R8s didn’t miss a beat right through the race, while Kristensen, Lehto and Werner barely put a foot wrong over the course of the 24 hours. That set the winning entry apart from its rivals. There were four genuine contenders for the win and four of them were delayed, with a mixture of technical problems and driver errors. Perhaps the most remarkable thing was that all four of those cars had run into trouble before the race was much more than three hours old, allowing Lehto to take a lead that he and his teammates would never relinquish. The fastest of the challengers were the first to be delayed. Henri Pescarolo’s pair of Judd-powered prototypes, built to the latest aerodynamic rules, easily had the edge on speed over the all-conquering R8. Old-style cars such as the R8, remember, had been penalized with both an increase in the minimum weight and a reduction in engine performance. That explains why Emanuele Pirro, who led the Audi charge in the second Champion entry, would suggest the French cars were “in a different category.” After just two laps of the 8.48-mile Circuit de la Sarthe, the best of the Pescarolos, driven by former Cadillac works driver Emmanuel Collard, was nearly 15 seconds up on Pirro in fourth place. Seven laps in, that gap stood at more than half a minute. If the Pescarolos could proceed through this race without drama, and one had run reliably to fourth place last year, the Audis weren’t going stand a chance. Pescarolo would hit trouble, and earlier than anyone could have expected. The car driven by World Rally champion Sebastien Loeb lost time in the hands of Soheil Ayari, who clashed with a slower car before the race was two hours old. Two stops for suspension repairs briefly dropped the car out of the top 10. A second clash with a slower car in the night would drop Ayari, Loeb and Eric Helary out of contention, while a third off, shortly before midday on Sunday, finally put the car out of the race. The leading Pescarolo, meanwhile, made it as far as the end of the third hour before technical problems intervened. A gearbox problem forced the team to change the complete internals with the loss of 26 minutes—five laps. Pescarolo’s problems left Pirro in the second Champion Audi to take the lead, but he would slide off the track early in the third hour and lose around three minutes for repairs, allowing the Kristensen car to take up its position at the front of the field. The second Champion Audi, in which Allan McNish and Frank Biela joined Pirro, never truly recovered from its early delay. It briefly got within a minute of the leader on Sunday morning before a delaminated tire sent McNish off the road at the Indianapolis corner in the 15th hour and from there back to the pits for suspension repairs. That allowed Collard’s Pescarolo into second. The car was still three laps down, but such was its superior pace that the Frenchman and compatriots Erik Comas and Jean-Christophe Boullion had already clawed back two of the laps lost earlier. That gap briefly came down to less than one lap until Pescarolo realized the chase was in vain and, with the car’s engine temperatures rising, decided to settle for second. “I told my drivers to push,” said Pescarolo, “and continued to do so until the final hour. The engine wasn’t overheating, but it was a little too warm.” The third Audi in the race, the French-run ORECA car, claimed fourth behind McNish and company after twice being delayed by unexplained right-front suspension failure. An unusually high rate of attrition among the prototypes allowed the GT1 class-winning Chevrolet Corvette C6-R to claim fifth overall after a thrilling battle with the new Aston Martin DBR9s (see sidebar). GT2 honors fell to the BAM!/Alex Job Racing Porsche 911 GT3-RSR, in which Mike Rockenfeller and Marc Lieb did all but a handful of laps when money man Leo Hindery took over for a brief stint early in the race. The two young Germans somehow kept the car ahead of the favored Petersen/White Lightning entry of Jorg Bergmeister, Patrick Long and Timo Bernhard. Flying Lizard made it three American Le Mans Series teams on the GT2 podium on what has to be described as a great day for U.S. sports car racing. RACE RESULTS: Circuit de la Sarthe 8.45-mile road course June 18-19 1. Lehto/Werner/Kristensen, Audi R8, 370 laps (LM1 winner); 2. Collard/Boullion/Comas, Pescarolo-Judd, 368; 3. Biela/Pirro/McNish, Audi R8, 364; 4. Montagny/Gounon/Ortelli, Audi R8, 362; 5. Gavin/Beretta/Magnussen, Chevrolet Corvette C6-R, 349 (GT1 winner); 6. Fellows/O’Connel/Papis, Chevrolet Corvette C6-R, 347; 7. Lammers/Julian/Bosch, Dome-Judd, 346; 8. Schwager/Frei/Vann, Courage-Judd, 339; 9. Brabham/Sarrazin/Turner, Aston Martin DB9R, 333; 10. L. Hindery/Rockenfeller/Lieb, Porsche 911 GT3 RSR, 332 (GT2 winner); 11. Bergmeister/Long/Bernhard, Porsche 911 GT3 RSR, 331; 12. Hignett/Stack/Kurosawa, Zytek 04S, 325; 13. P. Goueslard/Dupard/Vosse, Ferrari 550 Maranello, 324; 14. van Overbeek/Pechnik/Neiman, Porsche 911 GT3 RSR, 323; 15. Minassian/Walter-Campbell/Wallace, DBA-Judd, 322; 16. Dumas/Dumez/Narac, Porsche 911 GT3 RSR; 17. Short/Barbosa/Ickx, Dallara-Judd, 318; 18. Fomenko/Vasiliev/Bouchut, Ferrari 550 Maranello, 315; 19. Policand/Campbell/Alphand, Porsche 911 GT3 RS, 311; 20. Nielsen/Thyrring/Ehret, Porsche 911 GT3 RSR, 307; 21. Erdos/Newton/Hughes, Lola-MG, 304 (LM2 winner); 22. Gosselin/Ojjeh/Sharpe, Courage C65-Ford, 300; 23. Belmondo/Andre/Sutherland, Courage C65-Ford, 294; 24. Collin/Felbermayr/Shep, Porsche 911 GT3 RSR, 274; 25. Bennett/Mitchell/Mullen, Courage-Judd, 268; 26. Hartshorne/Stanton/Johnson, TVR Tuscan T40, 256; 27. Terada/Roussel/Binnie, WR-Peugeot, 233 http://www.autoweek.com/article.cms?articleId=102618
