Introduction
After a long break the Le Mans Series championship continued in Germany with famous ADAC 1000-km-Rennen Nürburgring. During the championship break, which lasted more than three months, most of the LMS team took an opportunity to race in the most prestigious endurance race the Le Mans 24 Hours. Audi once again proved there they are still capable of winning races despite lacking speed compared to their main rivals the Peugeots. This 1000 kms race was the fourth and penultimate race of the LMS season and Audi desperately needed to win on their home ground since the LMS score was 3:0 for Peugeots after the first three races.
Qualifying
After the first practice session the situation looked promising for Audi since one of their cars was second just 0.2 seconds behind the leading Peugeot. The second car was fourth not far behind. Another important contender, the Czech Lola Aston Martin was only 8th. The team used a completely new car, which was originally intended to debut in Le Mans but since it had not been prepared well, the debut was postponed until the Nürburgring race. Next sessions however showed that the Lola Aston Martin project is progressing very well. On the other side while Peugeots were improving sessions after session, Audi had no answer and in the qualifying session the Audi were not even able to match their own time, while Lola Aston Martin pilot Mücke set a very fast lap to qualifying the third behind the two Peugeots. Audis were only 4th and 5th, though based on their best sector times, they were able to run quicker than the Lola.
Apart from those named above there was only one LMP1 car able to lap quicker in qualifying than P2 van Merksteijn Porsche RS Spyder, and it was the Oreca-Courage of Panis and Lappiere. Note that team and car owner van Merksteijn was not present at this race as he prefered to take part in German Rallye and thus effectively losing LMS drivers's titleas his usual co-driver Jos Verstappen was present, along with Jeroen Bleekemolen who raced with the team in Le Mans for the first time (though having taken part in testing in Paul Ricard and Le Mans before). The second Oreca-Courage was also present after Ortelli's heavy accident in Monza. Ortelli was now OK and the car was built from new. That Oreca split two Porsche RS Spyders on the grid as it was followed by the Essex Racing LMP2 Porsche closely followed by a surprise, second Epsilon Euskadi, and a pair of factory Pescarolos.
Another driver returning after a heavy Monza accident was Jamie Campbell-Walter in a Creation. He was now, as a team driver number one, moved to the car number 15, which had much better position in the championship, while into the repaired car, which ran in Le Mans as a private entry, new drivers were invited. A nice woman Liz Haliday was asked to make her LMP1 debut while her co-driver Stephen Simpson was about to make his first ever sports car race. Thus not much was expected out of this car. Best Creation qualified 14th just behind the pretty Lola LMP2 Coupe of Team Sebah.
Relatively worst supported GT1 class with only four cars present was dominated by the lone Aston Martin driven by excellent duo Tomas Enge and Antonio Garcia. Since there was a very large prototype field on both LMP classes, the Aston Martin could reach only 30th position on the grid, actually the highest ever spot occupied by the GT pole winning car in the Le Mans Series history. After a drama in a free practice session when GT2 championship leading car got a fire and was rather damaged and could not feature anymore, the GT2 pole went to another Ferrari, entered by Farnbacher ahead of two best Porsches of Team Felbermayr-Proton and IMSA Performance.
Race
The race, despite forecast was ran, similarly as all practice sessions over the previous days, under very nice, warm and sunny weather conditions and appeared to be not one of the most exciting ones in the Le Mans Series history. It had its moments and generally it was a good race, as always, thanks to a large field, quality of most teams and drivers, and especially thanks to very nice, pretty and quick cars with a lot of variety, anything not seen outside the ACO regulation-based series and something that made the race better then any other, even the sports car-based, races. Well, but the dominance of the Peugeots over the Audis and the rest of the field was really huge this time. The entire race reminded the early stages of the Le Mans race when the trio of Peugeots pulled away of anything else very quickly, but his time at the Nürburgring, no reliability problems, accidents or weather conditions changes hit the effort. Fortunately there were no safety car periods, so Peugeot's speed could be crowned by one lap gap ahead of Audi. Leading Peugeot cought better of Audis in about two hours into the race. This is something impossible in the ALMS, where yellow periods keep the top prototypes in the lead lap during the entire race, unless there are some technical problems or accidents - maybe something to think of for those, that think the source of close finishes in the ALMS lies elsewhere but the cautions.
When the Peugeots almost lapped the final Audi in the lead lap, the performance between the two makes became more balanced and the Peugeot no.8 of Lamy and Sarazzin, which was leading at that time, circulated behind the Audi no.2 of Premat and Rockenfeller, who were by the way quicker than Audi no.1 of Capello/McNish for most of the practice sessions and the race, for many laps, at times even losing in the traffic. Peugeots probably did not need to ran at the maximum speed and risk some collision or mechanical failure. While in the early stages the Peugeots fought between themselves very closely and it was the car no.7 driven by Gene and Minassian that was in the lead, later during the second hour the car no.8 got into the 10-15 second lead after their team-mates suffered some minor problems with a starter during their second pitstop and this situation remained almost fixed for the rest of the race.
So the race was win by the Peugeot no.8, which was a great achievement by the Peugeot factory as for their championship prospects it would far more useful if the other car had won as it leads the championship but they simply do not have any team order and let the drivers fight themselves for victories and championship positions. So the championship leading Peugeot duo in number 7 finished second. On the other side, Audi had their car number 2 much better in the championship standings than the number 1 and, despite the number 2 was ahead of number 1 during most part of the race, in the final stages the number 1 moved to the third position overall so the team called it for a tyre change letting the car number 2 scoring maximum available points for Audi in this race.
As for the other cars, the most significant performance was shown by the new Lola Aston Martin. After qualifying ahead of both Audis Mücke managed to keep the car third overall for some time but during the first hour both Audis proved to be faster. But since them the Lola ran reliably and despite some small problems it kept the position of 'the best of the rest' for the entired race and finished in fine fifth overall. Other positions were occupied by Orecas slightly attacked by factory Pescarolos and the van Merksteijn Porsche but in the end one car suffered problems and did not even cross the line in the final minute while the other came in sixth ahead of the LMP2 Porsche as both factory Pescarolos faces serious problems during the race.
The GT classes saw and dominance on both sides. In GT1 the Aston Martin driven by Enge/Garcia lead from the start to the finish and in the end it was the only competitive finished of the class. The only other car finishing in the class was very much delayed Corvette of Luc Alphand covering 32 laps less than the Aston Martin but still scoring important 8 points for the championship (just two fewer than the Aston Martin team). In GT2 there was a lot of more started but still it was easily dominated by a single entry. It was the Ferrari of Virgo team that was almost destroyed by the fire in a free practice session two days before. But the team worked very hard to prepare the car for the warm up and the race, ordering some parts straight from Michelotto in Italy and despite the drivers Bruni and Bell had to start last from the pitlane they soon got among the class leaders and then managed to lap everything in the class at least twice. One of the factors were also their Dunlops which seems to work better with GT2 cars then traditional Michelins. Several other GT2 teams had already switched to Dunlop and the results did come along. An example was the JMB team with a couple of Ferraris that showed a good performance in the race with their gentleman drivers and finished 4th and 7th in the much better supported GT2 class.
