For 10 days in the build-up to the 2023 running of the Le Mans 24 Hours, DSC is reflecting on some of the best, worst and wacky moments from its time covering the event since the turn of the century.
Today is the last day of DSC’s 100 moments feature, the previous parts can be found below:
PART 1 – PART 2 – PART 3 – PART 4 – PART 5 – PART 6 – PART 7 – PART 8 – PART 9
91. Simonsen complains about BoP, then destroys everyone in Qualifying! (2013)
There’s a more significant ‘moment from 2013 about Allan Simonsen of course, but this one looks to remember the cheeky, and supremely talented sides of the Dane.
Always serious about his racing, and always with a twinkle in the eye – before qualifying he was quick to tell DSC that his Aston Martin had no chance this year – the Balance of Performance for the car was dreadful!
He then went out and destroyed the field in qualifying – a 3:57.776 in the final qualifying session more than a second clear of the nearest class contender and ahead too of both of the factory Corvettes and both of the factory SRT Vipers.
I playfully called him an (expletive deleted) liar to his face post-session and got a fully-fledged and smiling hug for my troubles. God I miss him!
92. Corvette Racing’s eighth class win (2015)
Since the turn of the century Corvette Racing has been a force at the Le Mans 24 Hours in the GT classes. With the C5, C6, C7 and now C8 platforms the American team has racked up eight class wins, and is looking for a ninth this year.
Its most recent victory came in 2015, on a year in with the C7.R achieved a rare feat, winning its class as the Rolex 24 Hours, Sebring 12 Hours and Le Mans in the same season.
While most of the attention that year centred around the huge LMP1 field, and its four factory teams, in the GTE Pro category the competition was just as fierce, with AF Corse, Porsche and Aston Martin also running factory efforts.
It was a tale of two very different race weeks in the Corvette garage, as the #63 car was withdrawn from the meeting before the 24 Hours began, after a big off for Jan Magnussen at the Porsche Curves during Qualifying which damaged the car beyond repair.
Corvette’s hopes then solely rested on the #64 of Oliver Gavin, Tommy Milner and Jordan Taylor come race day, and the trio delivered, with a dominant victory finishing five laps ahead of the chasing #71 AF Corse Ferrari.
Perhaps it would have been a different story if the #51 AF 458 Italia GT2 hadn’t suffered a gearbox issue that cost the car multiple laps on Sunday morning, after being locked in a battle with the Corvette throughout the first half of the race. But, you have to be fast and reliable to win in GTE, and Corvette’s chariot made history with a near-perfect run.
It would be the C7.R’s only Pro win at Le Mans as two years later when Corvette looked poised to claim win number nine with the car the racing gods were not on its side and a late puncture in the dying minutes left the door open for Aston Martin to steal the show.
93. The first diesel win (2006)
Audi’s first victory at Le Mans with R10 TDI in 2006 was a hugely significant one for wider motorsport as well as Audi’s programme. The new diesel-powered P1 car, which was revealed just a year prior to its Le Mans in Paris, marked the end of the R8’s era of dominance in the race, and the start of a new era of progress from Audi, which would go on to perfect diesel racing technology before moving into hybrid-powered prototype racing six years later with the R18.
At the time nobody knew if the diesel route was the right one, and in hindsight, it appears to be an even stranger decision with what we now know about ‘Diesel gate’ and how unpalatable the fuel has become in motorsport in recent years. But, for the R10 and its legacy, it proved to be a masterstroke.
The R10 won at Sebring to open the season and went on to lock out the front row in Qualifying at Le Mans by two seconds. Audi’s new turbo-charged open-cockpit challenger then proved that it was both reliable as well as fast, as the #8 of Frank Biela, Marco Werner and Emanuele Pirro went on to score a famous victory by four laps over the best-placed Pescarolo C60 Hybrid.
It wasn’t a perfect race for Audi, as the #7 sister car would lose time in the pits due to injector and turbo problems. However, despite spending over an hour of the race in the garage, Allan McNish, Tom Kristensen and Dindo Capello came home home third, ensuring the R10 achieved a double podium on debut.
The R10 would eventually go undefeated during its tenure at Le Mans, bettering Peugeot’s 908 in both 2007 and 2008 before the German marque moved onto the R15 platform in 2009.
94. Mansell’s short-lived debut (2010)
While there was no doubt that the major storyline in the LMP1 class of the 2010 running of the Le Mans 24 Hours was the fourth edition of Audi vs Peugeot, there was plenty of media buzz surrounding the Beechdean Mansell effort in the class.
Armed with a Dunlop-shod Ginetta Zytek, 1992 Formula 1 World Champion Nigel Mansell had high hopes for his Le Mans debut, which he would make alongside his two sons Greg and Leo.
Unfortunately for the F1 hero, his experience in the race would end after just 17 minutes. when he had an off on the run down to Indianapolis. He hit the armco on driver’s right, the impact hard enough to send him back across the circuit and into the barriers on the left side of the track, facing the oncoming traffic.
The car would be retired on the spot, with Mansell (56 at the time) needing to be extracted from the car and sent to the medical centre and later a local hospital for checks.
That would be his only his one and only taste of the endurance classic, with the Beechdean Mansell programme coming to at the end after the conclusion of the 2010 Le Mans Series season.
95. Porsche’s 919 breakthrough
2015 really was a golden year for the Le Mans 24 Hours, with Audi, Nissan, Porsche and Toyota all bringing full-fat factory efforts to the race at what would be the ultimate peak for the hybrid LMP1 era.
While Nissan’s week with the GT-R LM NISMO would prove to be disastrous, for the remaining three works teams it would prove to be a clash of the titans, with Audi, Porsche and Toyota pushing each other to the limit throughout practice, qualifying and the race.
Ultimately on Saturday and Sunday, it would come down to a battle between Audis R18 e-tron Quattros and Porsche’s 919 Hybrids, with Porsche’s guest-entered third car, the #17 of Earl Bamber, Nicky Tandy and Nico Hulkenberg, taking a surprise win. The trio, who only had one race weekend together under their belts at Spa ahead of the 24 Hours, would lead 214 laps, the most of any car in the LMP1 class, taking control in the second half of the race and storming to victory.
The triumph would serve as a change of the guard between Audi and Porsche. After years of dominance through the 2000s and early 2010s, Audi’s time as the benchmark at Le Mans was over, with Porsche claiming the first of its three successive wins with the 919, which would go on a vertical development curve until the programme was axed at the end of 2017.
96. The Peugeot engine photographs (2007)
Peugeot were mightily sensitive at the start of the 908 HDI FAP programme not to allow any photography of their V12 diesel engine.
So much so that team members regularly stood directly in front of photographers around the Peugeot garage.
The policy continued despite some polite and professional approaches until finally, Racecar Engineering’s Sam Collins lost his patience and publicly issued a ‘bounty’ for pics of the engine!
An initially outraged response from the team soon faded after oa factory car went out at the Test Day on the car’s debut, only to lose the rear bodywork early in the lap, the car returning slowly enough for just about every photographer, Pro and amateur, at Le Mans to get as many pictures as they liked!
97- The Peugeot 908’s infamous boost button (2008)
The Peugeot 908 programme produced one of the standout hero cars of the DSC era at Le Mans. The cars were massively powerful and blindingly fast, making a winning run at six-hour and 1000km races, well into double figures, against factory Audi opposition.
At Le Mans though, the 908 took a win only once, in 2009. Perhaps over-ambitious engineers and team management stretched the envelope too far, when a more conservative approach could have added wins.
One interesting aside to the 908 stories came when the cars started to make their way into private hands.
The 908 HDI FAP, now owned by Kriton Lentoudis, made its first public appearance in private hands at a Brands Hatch Masters Endurance Legends event and drew huge attention from those in the paddock, including DSC’s editor and founding editor. Both were lucky enough to be given a tour of the cockpit by none other than Nicolas Minassian. One immediate question came with a brightly-labelled button on the steering wheel “BOOST”.
The explanation from ‘Quick Nic’ was that this function gave the 908 an additional 40 or so horsepower for a brief period, on over-boost, but could only be used at night because “doing it kicked out a huge amount of smoke, which was prohibited by regulation. We couldn’t do it during the day.”
98. Big Al (2010)
2010 and Graham’s plumber’s merchants launched a Le Mans-themed promotion featuring their personal sponsorship benefactor Allan Mcnish, the promotion included cardboard cut-outs that were somewhat larger than the famously compact Scot.
DSC obtained one of the items through a confidential source (Audi PR Martyn Pass) and proceeded to have a lot of fun throughout Le Mans week with ‘Big Al’ – culminating in a drive at the Friday Drivers parade to get every driver on the grid to sign the board.
We achieved that and later donated it to the ‘Malaria No More’ campaign that was being promoted at the race by Highcroft Racing – ‘Big Al’ fetched a hefty four-figure dollar sum for a very worthy cause!
99. Late for scrutineering? Maybe not!
We’re keeping a name out of this one (for now) but some years ago word came that one of the competitors was going to be in some trouble with their time slot for Scrutineering. A misunderstanding had seen them leaving Paris by road with less than an hour before their designated slot.
That’s a journey of 200-250km – easily 2.5-3 hours most days.
They were half an hour late!
Sometimes having a Maserati MC12 comes in handy I guess!
100. The Captain
This section would not be complete without remembering one of our own who is no longer with us.
News broke during the city centre scrutineering in 2015 that our long-time friend, colleague, and for many years photographic contributor David Stephens, had been taken seriously ill just before he was due to travel to Le Mans. Just a day or two later we received the news that he had passed away.
It was a truly shocking moment and marked the passing of a man who was defined by his passion for family and sport, an almost ever-present despite a chaotic approach to his own logistical preparations.
Known to one and all in the press room as Captain Black due to his tendency to wear – all black – ‘The Captain’ is much missed.
