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LE MANS, France —  Three years ago, Mike Rockenfeller crashed out of the 24 Hours of Le Mans race at the Tertre Rouge corner, in what he described was the worst day of his life. After the Peugeot dominated qualifying, virtually no one expected that the Audi Team would take its third One, Two, Three win at Le Mans in 2010.

But with Rockenfeller atoning for the awful day at Tertre Rouge with a splendid drive, he and co-drivers Timo Bernhard and Romain Dumas kept their Audi R15 in the hunt until one-by-one the Peugeots self-destructed and the the vindication for not only that crash but for a year of losing to their chief rival was complete.

In a little bit of the Tortoise and the Hare strategy,  the Audi Team never gave up running its own race, even after the no. 7 car driven by Tom Kristensen was punted off of the Circuit de la Sarthe early on, by the no. 79 BMW M3 E92 “Art Car”.  The team refused to give up, with some help from the Audi R15 Plus, in which all three cars had zero mechanical problems.

Dr Wolfgang Ullrich, the head of Audi Motorsport, has said, “This is the hardest race that we have ever won”, and added that they were going to invite the Peugeot team to the post race party tonight, and he was sure that they would come.

Peugeot did not appear to run near their full race speed during the event, and there is supposition that the team knew there was a problem with the car early on. One only has to go back to that race three years ago when two of three Peugeot’s went out with mechanical issues. Last year the Peugeot Team won without really having any pressure from the Audi Team, who were sorting out the new R15 chassis.

For Peugeot, it was an exasperating 24 hours that started with great expectations and ended in the agony of defeat with nary a one of the four cars entering finishing,