2011 STRATEGY - RACE REPORT
Against odds
the
How Audi’s sole remaining car won Le Mans, using strategy as the ultimate weapon
BY PAUL TRUSWELL
T
he 2011 24-hour race at Le Mans was probably the closest ever. At the chequered fl ag, the
Audi R18 TDI of Benoît Tréluyer, André Lotterer and Marcel Fässler was just 13.854 seconds ahead of the Peugeot 908 of Simon Pagenaud, Sébastien Bourdais and Pedro Lamy, making this the closest competitive fi nish since the famous triumph of John Wyer’s Ford GT40 in 1969 over the works Porsche 908. Maybe
www.racecar-engineering.com • Le Mans
Peugeot should have changed the nomenclature of its Le Mans contender after all. What made this race so gripping, though, was that the battle for the lead was close throughout the race (unlike in 1969). For the most part, the gap between fi rst and second could be measured in terms of seconds, or at the outside a minute or two, and at no time did the leader manage to lap the fi eld. Such was the intensity of the race that the lead changed 46 times at the
start / fi nish line and more than that if you count changes on the track, which didn’t get recorded by the timekeepers. Step forward Allan McNish, who briefl y took the lead in the number 3 Audi before his violent accident on lap 15. As a consequence, any
attempt to identify a single point at which the race turned will be diffi cult. The safety car could be the fi rst culprit – it made fi ve appearances in all, for a total of four hours 53 seconds, and inevitably this impacted events
on the track, as drivers tried to stay out as long as possible to avoid being delayed waiting at the end of the pit lane. Although in the USA pitting
during yellow is a way of life, at Le Mans the regulations make it distinctly undesirable to pit while the safety car is circulating. Ultimately, however, fuel needs to be taken and, in the end, each of the leading diesels had to stop under yellow fl ag conditions. The details are in fi gure 1. However, even though the
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