LE MANS, France — If the results of this past weekend’s pre-race Le Mans test can be believed, Audi’s domination of the 24-hour classic, which began in 2000 and has continued ever since, could be in jeopardy. That was made clear by Champ Car star Sebastien Bourdais. He took his Peugeot 980 Turbo Diesel around the famous Sarthe circuit in 3:26.07, 2.2 seconds quicker than the fastest of the Audis; the R10 diesel of Emanuele Pirro, Frank Biela and Marco Werner.
Still, Bourdais’s time was achieved by cutting the Ford chicane just before the pits on the frontstraight, a “no-no” for the race itself, which is set for the weekend after next.
Backing up the skeptics who believe that Audi will retain its upper hand over the two Peugeot coupes entered for the event is the fact that the third-quickest time belonged to the sister R10 of Rinaldo Capello, Allan McNish and Mike Rockenfeller at 3:28.406. Indeed, the second Peugeot 908, with Gene Minassian and Jacques Villeneuve doing no better than a 3:30-plus tour of the track, good enough for only fifth quickest on the timing charts.
With Le Mans having reduced the engine air restrictors for the smaller, lesser-performing LMP2 cars, presumably in an effort to ensure that there won’t be any embarrassing moments such as have occurred in the American Le Mans Series, where the Penske Porsche RS Spyders have beaten the Audi diesels three-straight times for the overall victory, few here will be watching the outcome in the class. However, for the record, the fast LMP2 time was turned in by Adrian Fernandez, one of the top LMP2 contenders in the ALMS, and Barazi Epsilon with Zytek at 3:39.016, putting him 16th fastest.
As for GT1, the top of the production-car arena was the Corvette of Jan Magnussen, Johnny O’Connell and Ron Fellows, which posted a lap of 3:49.201, 1.6 seconds better than the Aston Martin DBR8 of Johnny Herbert and Tomas Enge, the latter recently recovered from his ALMS St. Petersburg accident in March with his Petersen/White Lightning GT2 Ferrari 430GT.
As for GT2, surprisingly, the Ferraris, which have dominated in the category here in North America so far this year, winning all five ALMS events held, were nowhere to be found after the Le Mans practice session.
At the top of the list and leading the three-car Porsche parade in the IMSA Performance 911 GT3RSR was U.S. star Patrick Long and his partner, Narac Rilietz, at 4:01.598. Third fastest of the three front-running Porsches was the Flying Lizard entry of Jorg Bergmeister and Johannes van Overbeek, which at 4:02.668 was 1.6 seconds slower than Long and company.
Afterwards, David Richards, the boss of ProDrive and the new head of Aston Martin itself, said that he believed it would be a three-way fight between his cars internally, the whole of the Aston Martin cadre then battling with the Corvettes and the Saleens for the No. 1 position throughout the 24-hour run.
As he put it, “It should be a classic Le Mans race.”
In fact, with the Peugeots and the Audis on par with each other in terms of performance and the same going for the GT1 Astons, Corvettes and Saleens, not to mention the expected battle between the Porsches and Ferraris in GT3, according to Richards, Le Mans this year could well be a “true classic, not only for the GT1 set, but almost everywhere else as well.”