Le Mans

The 007 Aston Martin LMP1 car led all petrol-powered cars and finished fourth overall in its first race at Le Mans.

OXFORDSHIRE, United Kingdom – In 1959 one the sweetest looking race cars ever to grace the Circuit de le Sarthe won the overall title at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. It was the Aston Martin DBR1. It also won the World Sports Car Championship that year with the legendary Stirling Moss behind the wheel at the final race of the season, The Goodwood Tourist Trophy.

In 2007 Aston Martin returned to the most famous endurance race with an entry in the LMGT1 class where it was the class winner. The team defended its championship in 2008 and at the end of the year announced that it had decided to move to LMP1 class.

That left Aston Martin Racing Team Principal George Howard-Chappell with a major project – development of a new LMP1 car in six months.

Dr. Wolfgang Ullrich

INGOLSTADT, Germany — The following are five questions that were presented to Head of Audi Motorsport  Dr. Wolfgang Ullrich via email. His answers are interesting an illuminating, in retrospect to the third place finish by Audi at Le Mans after dominating the track for nearly a decade.  Most interesting is that Audi Corporate has given the go-ahead for the team to return to Le Mans next year to see if they can wrestle the title back from Peugeot.

1. I believe that you and the Audi team have always respected your competitors (and this perhaps showed more in the loss this year at Le Mans) but I wonder if the scintillating win at Sebring might have created a false sense of security with respect to the level of the development of the R-15 chassis?

Not at all. Sebring and Le Mans are very different race tracks. Sebring is a good dress rehearsal and a good test for Le Mans because the track is very tough and you can see if a new car is strong enough. But you are running with much more down force at Sebring and the speeds are much higher than at Le Mans. We knew after Sebring that we have quite a good car right from the start but we knew also that there was still a lot of work to do.

The Audi R-15 scored a spectacular victory at Sebring -- but it did not translate into a win at Le Mans.

2. There is little doubt that the economy of today has affected all of automotive industry, but is it fair to say that had you been able to run the car in all of the ALMS series prior to Le Mans, and several of the other major endurance events, do you think this would have contributed to the R-15 chassis being more competitive at Le Mans?

We were running an intense test program for the R15 TDI between Sebring and Le Mans and had to adapt the car to the additional 30 kilograms (a little more than 66 pounds) which the ACO imposed for Diesel-powered cars. This was quite a lot of work with a brand new car. Even if we would have had the budget it would have been almost impossible for us to compete in any races. It’s difficult to judge if we would have been more competitive at Le Mans if we had done some more races with the R15 TDI because most of the problems we had were very much “Le Mans specials”. The pre-test would have been helpful.  We raced at Sebring and we did not have any of the problems we had at Le Mans.

At the start of the race, you can see the Audi team had "carved" on the front end to add additional "winglets".

3. Let’s assume that your management says that it is a wise and prudent idea to come back to Le Mans next year and for the next four years. How much additional development will required for a closed car?

Our CEO has already announced that we will be back at Le Mans next year – and we will be back with the R15 TDI. We still believe that the concept of an open car is a good one for Le Mans. We’ve seen this year that it has become even more difficult to be competitive at Le Mans with a brand new car at the very first time because there is no more test day. So building a new car for 2010 would definitely not be our goal. The R15 TDI has a lot of potential and we are sure the car can be competitive in 2010 as soon as we have solved the issues we had this year.

The Audi R-15 will return to Le Mans for the 2010 event, Dr. Wolfgang Ullrich, head of Audi Sport announced.

4. There seemed to be some significant discussion with officials at about the halfway point of the race. There were rulebooks out and some discussions with the ACO official there — can you elucidate on what was being discussed?

There have been some discussions on details of the new pit stop rules regarding the work of the mechanics in the pit lane that had been allowed in the past.

Dr. Wolfgang Ullrich (at right) with crew (and rulebook) and ACO official review pit stop repairs.

Dr. Wolfgang Ullrich (at right) with crew (and rulebook) and ACO official review pit stop repairs.

5. Do you think that the rain that came on Monday would have made a difference in the results had it come 12 or 16 hours earlier?

This is difficult to say. The rain definitely helped us in 2008 and the R15 TDI was very competitive in the wet conditions during free practice on Wednesday. But Peugeot was also strong. So, this is hypothetical.

Driving in the rain

Driving in the rain on the way to Normandy

ON THE ROAD TO NORMANDY, France — One might be surprised at how many Brits attend the 24 Hours of Le Mans — and while this writer has no official numb er — all you have to do is look at all the cars heading for home and the ferry in the Normandy region.

More than that it is also one heck of a car show with virtually every car of your dreams on the road in a variety of configurations. These include the noble late model Bentley, about every flavor of Porsche you can imagine, including many that have the full roll-cage treatment, and any number of Ferraris as is pictured at left.

Driving  through the rain on the way to Normandy it was also possible to see that there were some folks in convertibles who were putting on the “stiff upper lip” as they motored through the moisture.

Strangely, a large number of these cars also are showing the 24 Hours of Le Mans Beer Disposal sticker — and judging by the number of empties that are seen in and around the race track this is a real if unjudged contest.